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[Q] How do I root without having to factor reset?? Don't want to lose photos.. HELP!!

So I've been looking for a solution for the past 2 months now it is SO frustrating. Anyway so...
I own a LG Nexus 5 (non rooted), and I've been using this photo app called VSCOcam solely as my phone camera for the last 2 years, and I've taken thousands and thousands of photos with it. The phone has been amazing for the last 2 years but it is time for an upgrade.
So I went to backup my phone and realized that VSCOcam had screwed me... The app has its own internal library so unless you "export" the photos, they are not accessible in /sdcard. Someone in XDA forums had the app and told me that the photos are stored inside "/data/data/com.vsco.cam/files/images" and unless I root I wont have access.
Now heres the cycle of stupidness which I think you all can guess. In order to root -> I need to unlock my bootloader, and to unlock my bootloader -> I need to factory reset!
I've tried just about everything to root my phone without factory resetting, so far none has succeeded.I contacted the devs for VSCOcam and they told me to highlight the photos individually and export... are you kidding me??
What should I do? Should I just bite the bullet and lose ALL MY PHOTOS?? The app is currently listed as 12gb in size thats so heartbreaking!!!
TL;DR - VSCOcam hid thousands of photos in "/data/data/com.vsco.cam/files/images" which is unreachable without root, and to root means to factory reset my phone wiping all the photos I'm trying to get in the first place...

mobscene8859 said:
So I've been looking for a solution for the past 2 months now it is SO frustrating. Anyway so...
I own a LG Nexus 5 (non rooted), and I've been using this photo app called VSCOcam solely as my phone camera for the last 2 years, and I've taken thousands and thousands of photos with it. The phone has been amazing for the last 2 years but it is time for an upgrade.
So I went to backup my phone and realized that VSCOcam had screwed me... The app has its own internal library so unless you "export" the photos, they are not accessible in /sdcard. Someone in XDA forums had the app and told me that the photos are stored inside "/data/data/com.vsco.cam/files/images" and unless I root I wont have access.
Now heres the cycle of stupidness which I think you all can guess. In order to root -> I need to unlock my bootloader, and to unlock my bootloader -> I need to factory reset!
I've tried just about everything to root my phone without factory resetting, so far none has succeeded.I contacted the devs for VSCOcam and they told me to highlight the photos individually and export... are you kidding me??
What should I do? Should I just bite the bullet and lose ALL MY PHOTOS?? The app is currently listed as 12gb in size thats so heartbreaking!!!
TL;DR - VSCOcam hid thousands of photos in "/data/data/com.vsco.cam/files/images" which is unreachable without root, and to root means to factory reset my phone wiping all the photos I'm trying to get in the first place...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I wonder if you can't use something like Helium to make the backup. If you're not rooted, it uses ADB to make a backup (I think). See where you get with that. If you can get them on your hard drive, they should be yours for the taking.

Aerowinder said:
I wonder if you can't use something like Helium to make the backup. If you're not rooted, it uses ADB to make a backup (I think). See where you get with that. If you can get them on your hard drive, they should be yours for the taking.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you for the suggestion, but I've already tried that, when I connect it to my PC Helium tells me the app is not supported and contact the app devs.... It was one of 3 apps that wasn't supported.
I could only laugh at my misery. :good:

mobscene8859 said:
Thank you for the suggestion, but I've already tried that, when I connect it to my PC Helium tells me the app is not supported and contact the app devs.... It was one of 3 apps that wasn't supported.
I could only laugh at my misery. :good:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Have you tried running an ADB backup manually from the command line? http://forum.xda-developers.com/galaxy-nexus/general/guide-phone-backup-unlock-root-t1420351
adb backup -all ??

What's the problem with exporting them then? Am I missing something?

Yes, I think you are. I had a look for VSCO and came across a post in January from mobscene asking exactly the same question, and I can see what he's getting at. This is what VSCO tech support say:
https://vsco.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/200435135-VSCO-Cam-How-do-I-save-my-images-
"You can save as many items as you want from your VSCO Cam library by simply tapping once on each image, and then selecting the share icon."
Since the images are stored in data/data, inaccessible via a file explorer on an unrooted phone, mobscene can't do a straight drag-and-drop.
And, as he says, before he can root the phone he'll have to unlock the bootloader, which will wipe the images. Catch 22, sort of defeats the point of the exercise.
But if this has been going on now for eight months, the manual export (tapping multiple images at a time and exporting - the VSCO site shows multiple select is possible) could have been done by now. An enormous effort, I get that, but if the photos are important enough then maybe worthwhile. Looks like the only option.

What happened after I deleted .apks in /system/app ?

Hello all,
I fell into a huge problem. I use a Nexus 5 16 GB variant with all sorts of games I can put inside of. Now I ran out of storage.
My smart ass told me search for culprits and I was ruthless on files as small as 50 MBs. . Now, then I saw a treasure trove of space which could be freed and that was in #/system/app. I deleted almost all of them and left behind some like Bluetooth.apk and NFC et al.
Now two things happened
1) I can no longer use the 'Explore Storage' in the Other category of Storage found i Settings app. It would say, Settings has Crashed.
2) I can no longer sync my contacts to Google as After asking to add account, it just asks again. Earlier I seamlessly used that feature.
I don't know what's broken more.
Please someone help.
Much thanks in advance.

Have you tried a full reset? Kinda of a risk... But worth it at times. My old phone I could delete all the system apps, then reset it and they'd all pop back up.

buffering.... said:
Have you tried a full reset? Kinda of a risk... But worth it at times. My old phone I could delete all the system apps, then reset it and they'd all pop back up.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have the ROM with me. Flashing that will ( or might) restore every functionality. But the point is why it did happen and unbreak the broken without flashing.

Why would you think that deleting anything from a system folder is a good idea...?
Just flash the system.img again. That should restore at least a working system, though I'd guess that you'll have to do some manual rework to restore lost apps. Your data should still be intact.
Just guessing, to be honest. I'm still astonished that you did this...
Have you considered an OTG USB stick? The attached photo shows an additional 128GB of storage on the tip of my little finger. I can post the links if anyone is interested.

dahawthorne said:
Why would you think that deleting anything from a system folder is a good idea...?
Just flash the system.img again. That should restore at least a working system, though I'd guess that you'll have to do some manual rework to restore lost apps. Your data should still be intact.
Just guessing, to be honest. I'm still astonished that you did this...
Have you considered an OTG USB stick? The attached photo shows an additional 128GB of storage on the tip of my little finger. I can post the links if anyone is interested.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't know why I did that. Maybe because I saw those apks lying there and thought to myself, what are they doing here. I deleted all of them.
The next part is more important now. I installed the same ROM on the same phone using multirom and then copied the whole system/app folder to my other ROMs broken app folder. And this helped remove the broken Settings functionality. But the Contacts functionality is still broken. Lastly I will flash the system image if I could not find the reason behind this. Thanks sir for the help.

Lost photos from google pixel

Hi Friends,
I went on an expedition recently and took a lot of photos & videos from my Google Pixel Build Number 7.1.1
I received (OTA) a security patch update of 97.4 MB on my return.
It seems after the update the photos from 8th Feb till 9th Feb got lost (videos are there).
I've spent 3 hours with google support without luck. It seems to me they are just hidden somwhere and not deleted as the BIN/TRASH is clean too.
Appreciate all you support as the photos are precious memories.
Cheers.

Have you have already checked online for copies? I think it asks which settings to use on setup, and the default may be to backup photos to the cloud and make space by removing items. I have the removal shut off on my phone, yet I left photo backup on, and it tends to ask if the photos haven't been backed up online. Your post doesn't say anything about shutting off the typical online photo backup, so that's where I would start.
If you don't have an online backup and the photos have been deleted, then I would figure some sort of data recovery would be another option. I've never used it, but DiskDigger Photo Recovery is one app that shows up in searches and doesn't seem to require root. Any sort of writing files to the phone, like installing an app, can potentially overwrite deleted files. Since support should know about the typical online backup of photos, I figure using some sort of data recovery software would be the next thing to try if you don't have a backup.

Yup noticed some videos missing

Please Help!! I Deleted my Photos

So I selected photo to delete and it somehow selected albums. So now Almost all my important pictures and videos are gone. I downloaded several apps and got back a good bit of pictures but I did not recover any videos. I read several pages about rooting the phone to actually get all the stuff back. Is this something that needs done? Also doesn't rooting wipe your phone so would that get rid of the deleted items? I am so devastated those pictures were my life and like an idiot I didn't back them up. Any ideas on how I can recover them?

Any ideas? I read an article saying you can root the phone and still recover deleted items but want to see what you guys think.
Sent from my SM-G935V using Tapatalk

If your files were stored internal there's a big chance that the rest might've got overwritten by other applications. On SD-Card you might be able to get more back but if you worked with it (meaning storing other files or probably even editing), it will most likely overwrite them.
Since every phone behaves different I can't say what you should use. I can only say what I read the most people suggesting.
They talk about the program recuva, which runs on your computer. After connecting your phone to your pc, they say you should run a 'deep scan'.
I never used it myself so I can't say if it works. You'd have to search how to use it.
(Program Link: Piriform - Recouva)
Rooting might also help in your favor, because those apps have more access to the storage and can perform actions normal apps can't do in there rather limited workspace.
But rooting also means writting/modifying data on your phone which could use the space where the remainings of your files are stored (deppends if they are internal or external/sd-card).
But from my expirence on pc, chances are very slim that you get all of your files back. I accidentally formatted my hard disk and after force stopping the process I only could restore about ~30% of my files (and most of them were corrupted).
You see formating or deleting doesn't actually delets stuff.
You could see all your stored files as a book and the index is that what you can see in your file manager. When you delete something it doesn't touches the file at first, it only deletes the entry in the index that a file was at that point in your storage and tells the system that place is free to use again. So apps will begin using that free space. After that it becomes almost imposible to get the file back.

Question Worth rooting phone to attempt photo recovery?

First of all I know I'm really stupid for doing this, I blame sleep deprivation.
2 days ago I imported all the photos from my z flip 3 to my ipad. After completing the import I used the option at the end of the import to delete off the phone. Found out tonight that the imported photos were only at ~400x400px.
Now I can't find the photos anywhere on the phone.
I have checked the recycle bin/trash in the photos and files apps but there is nothing in there. I have also tried Tensorshare Ultdata recovery, but no luck with that either. https://www.tenorshare.com/products/android-data-recovery.html
Would it be worth rooting the device to allow for a deeper scan of the file system, the phone is completely stock currently. If not is there anything else I can try or should I take it to a data recovery company?
Thank you taking the time to read and for any assistance you can share.

ghostgundam742 said:
First of all I know I'm really stupid for doing this, I blame sleep deprivation.
2 days ago I imported all the photos from my z flip 3 to my ipad. After completing the import I used the option at the end of the import to delete off the phone. Found out tonight that the imported photos were only at ~400x400px.
Now I can't find the photos anywhere on the phone.
I have checked the recycle bin/trash in the photos and files apps but there is nothing in there. I have also tried Tensorshare Ultdata recovery, but no luck with that either. https://www.tenorshare.com/products/android-data-recovery.html
Would it be worth rooting the device to allow for a deeper scan of the file system, the phone is completely stock currently. If not is there anything else I can try or should I take it to a data recovery company?
Thank you taking the time to read and for any assistance you can share.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
rooting it would format data, which in turn would generate new encryption key when you boot next time so you would be in even more of a mess sadly, if you didnt have online backup taking it to data recovery company might be your best choice

Thank you very much for the reply and advice, I dived a bit deeper and it turned out that the import was successful, there was a duplicate thumbnail image that was showing first.

Sounds like you solved it, but having gone through some fun data loss in the past, I wanted to leave this here for posterity.
If you need to recover data, do not root. Do not reboot. Do not delete or add anything unnecessary. The best results come from doing the least. When an image is deleted, it is similar to tearing up a physical photo and throwing it in the trash. The data still exists, but can be fragmented. The more you do, the more likely some or all of that data will be overwritten and become unrecoverable.
After searching through about 100 different recovery programs, I had the best results with https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.defianttech.diskdigger
It is the equivalent of the recovery programs for a computer, so it will show you thumbnails from that Facebook account of the ex you stalked 6 months ago in the results. It will also find almost anything that was deleted through normal means. Last time I used it personally was a couple years ago, but the reviews seem to imply it is still pretty effective.
Similar to what you described, you will also end up with a lot of thumbnails and previews. The easiest way to handle that is to run all of it through https://dupeguru.voltaicideas.net/ with the Picture option and the setting to "Match pictures of different dimensions" enabled. This will group all of the thumbnails and the originals to let you get rid of the junk.
Disclaimer: This is only personal preferences. I am a professional, but both apps listed in this post were downloaded free and used without any premium or paid features. This is not a sponsored suggestion.