Develop Bugs

HTC Restore Problem

Hi guys
I recently factory restored my HTC Desire and the built-in backup prompted me to restore my settings, which I did, but for some reason my SMS messages were not restored.
I checked the SD card, and there is a backup there, but of course the files are encrypted. Is there any way to read these files, or to restore my messaging SMS?
Thanks in advance!

Am I right in saying that the backups's hashes are salted with the device serial #? If that's the case then decryption should be quite possible.

I have had the exact same problem today. Had to return my Desire as it was faulty for a straight swap (kept the same SIM and SD card). The SD card has restored all contacts and music, but SMS messages have not transferred over. I've looked at every possible option in the settings but can't seem to see how to do this.
I'd be grateful for any advice or info. Thankyou.

slightly old thread, but relevant to my problem....
have been playing around a lot with my desire over the past week, and managed to delete the wrong nandroid backup and lost all my sms. I have a sense auto backup form a day or so earlier, but cannot for the life of me get the phone to read these - there's no option to restore just backup.
So, tried factory reset from recovery, copied the 'old' backup to the sd, and booted. Nothing was restored. Have tried all sorts of combos to try and get the backup to be read, but no joy at all. Even completely wiping everything, flashing the original rom i was using (modaco 3.1) and restarting, but still sense doesnt see the backup.
I definitley remember it doing it once during all the crazy rom swopping of the last few days, and the sms, wifi key etc all restored, but I can't get it to do it again.
Any ideas about 'forcing' the restore? I know that the backup is handset specific (tied to the serial/imei?) but it should restore on any rom using sense yeh?
all help greatly appreciated
ta.
another small thought, there may be an app idea in here for anyone thats interested - reading the sense backup and applying it by force? i know quite a few people tend to backup their sd card regularly, so it could be useful as a last resort option.

I guess there's not much I can help you but to avoid this problem in the future you might want to use SMS backup (by Cristoph Studer, there are 2 others on the Market with the same name) - backs up your sms's to your Gmail account, works great. I love the Cloud!

I have used sms backup in the past, didn't bother this time as i had the nandroid backup. Kicking myself as I'm usually pretty careful about what files i'm getting rid of, and have got all my sms for about the last ten yrs (minus the 2 months i just lost) for blackmail purposes time to crank the delete button paranoia up a notch again
edit: solved tok everything off the sd card, made sure i had the backup set from the date range i wanted, wiped absolutely everything from recovery, reflashed the rom i was running when the backup was taken & rebooted. the backup was picked up fine, all settings, sms etc back with no problems.
the small trick to getting this to occur seems to be just let the phone sit for a minute when it reboots - i assume that if you go into the setup wizard before the sd card is correctly moutned and read that you bypass the restore. i had done the same procedure to try to get it to restore before and it didn't, the pause to allow the sd card to be read was the only thing i did differently.

I'm having the same issue, I want to restore a back-up from my SD card, but cannot see any way to do it. I've tried a factory reset, but still no luck.
Can a restore be forced? The 2.2 upgrade seems to have removed Settings>Privacy

Same problem here, Froyo won't restore my backup.
I tried to downgrade to Eclair, but the installation failed with "Error 140: wrong bootloader version".
I guess my backup is pretty useless now...

Frojo wont restore settings after hardreset
I asked HTC about this, and here's the answer:
Thanks for your question regarding backup of your device. The former feature backup to SD card is missing in this newer version. This is due to Google, which has developed backup feature in the software, changed the system in 2.2, then back out to their servers instead. This applies to the Google devices, such as NexusOne. When your device is the HTC brand, we have some backup features as before. However, you can take backup in the following way (as with older versions of Android): Contacts: You can save contacts via Outlook when they are created as telephone contacts. For this you need HTC Sync and Outlook on your computer. HTC Sync, see your device's SD card. To open the map, select Mount in the device, your device is displayed on the computer as an external disk drive. Then you find the program through your computer's Windows Explorer, and also integrates it on your computer. You can now sync. You can also download HTC Sync from our website under Support tab. If you use Google contacts they can be retrieved back when you set up your email again. If you have configured an Exchange server, you can also download contacts onto the device again. Calendar appointments: These are transferred in the same manner as contacts. Emails: These can be synchronized over again through your Exchange server, or if you have Google mail. Data files: These can be transmitted via computer Explorer when you select Mount as previously described. You can then transfer your files to a folder on your computer. SMS and MMS: Those you can not backup.
Blueyed1

Way to go HTC.... hurray
The more I learn about Google and HTC's way of handling my data I get more determined to Root my phone to get full access of my phone, and to control what data and in what way that data is transferred to either google or HTC.
When you compare to the way Apple is controlling it's sheep herd, Google is not any better when it comes to data gathering and data sniping.

Blueyed1 said:
SMS and MMS: Those you can not backup.
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Click to collapse
WTF????????????????????????????

DRMON said:
WTF????????????????????????????
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Click to collapse
Backup not possible with previeus build in backup, that is..

[Q] Whole phone's gone crazy.. Apps seemingly disappeared

Hi,
I was just trying out a few ROMs, and after flashing CyanogenMod (The stable release, can't remember the exact name) and then doing a full wipe and restoring my LeeDroid Nandroid backup, I ran into a bit of a kerfuffle...
After booting up, I was greeted with blank homescreens - which was a bit annoying, but nothing too bad - and so went to get started on repopulating them.. only to find hardly any apps were present. I put this down to some of them not having synced yet, until I noticed that even system apps were missing; Market, Music etc - not a single downloaded/sideloaded app is present. They appear under the "Manage Applications" section of the Settings menu but only Data and Cache are present, not the Application themselves.
I reflashed the Nandroid backup again (and again), and was met with the same, only Astro File Manager had miraculously appeared so I could at least install some apps from my SD Card using that. So after installing the Market and Root Explorer from there, I could see that the System Apps were infact there, but required manual installation. I can't even re-download all of the lost Apps, as even attempting to select one in the Market leads to a force close.
I can effectively do nothing, except use the tiny array of Apps that are actually there, which at least does include Messaging and Phone. Does anyone have any idea how I can fix this, or a partial-solution at least?
Thanks
Ok, just as I finished typing this the Factory Reset finished and everything loaded. It seems everything is working now, but still, I'm just left with System Apps and with no sign of my other apps syncing/downloading.

After the wipe factory reset did you do nandroid install again straight after?
Sent from my leedroid v1.3a DhD via xda app

Yeah, and the same happened again. I tried various nandroids from all sorts of ROMs, and I would just get the same, even restoring the Stock ROM.
That said, the thread may as well be closed, I just went and did everything manually and everything's fine now. It took many hours, but it's in a usable state now.

i expect u will face the same problem soon as long as ur apps list will grow and be installed on ur device, this is a big issue i faced and still experimenting to get the best solution for, but currently the most effective cure is to mount ur sd card to a card reader, and go to the folder android_secure, cut some bunch of files ther(maybe half of them) and past to ur desktop, mount back the sd to ur device, ur phone will bahave normally now, this will work great after ur nandroid backup, when u see it work, try again the previous step and start to add files to android_secure folder from ur desktop, untill the bad behaviors start to occur.
hope this will help

[Q] How to achieve the most complete backup solution? (I have root)

Hi
So I don't really mind if I have to hook it up to the computer or anything, I just want a really complete backup solution. It should backup pretty much everything I have on my SD Card.
I already have Titanium Backup Pro and upuntil now I thought it was complete, but after completely wiping my SD Card in an attempt to install the latest RUU (which didn't work btw, but that's off topic...) and copying my Titanium Backup-stuff from a computer backup I realized it's really really incomplete. To be honest I'm not at all sure what it even is backing up... maybe my Titanium is just set wrong?
So what happened is this... like I said my SD Card was wiped but I had previously backed up Titanium to my Dropbox and pushed the whole folder to my phone after the wipe. However none of my settings for Nova Launcher were saved. My Nova settings back up was not saved. Passwords for Google, Facebook, Dropbox etc were not saved. Data from Swiftkey was not saved. Kakao Talk and SMS messaging history was not saved.
Like I said, I'm not sure what actually was saved...
I don't really mind, maybe even prefer, if I could use my computer to store these backups instead of the SD since I don't always have a lot of space left on my device.
(I think I got the filesystem thing and updating to the latest RUU didn't work - that's what landed me in this situation to begin with by the way.)

kaminix said:
Hi
So I don't really mind if I have to hook it up to the computer or anything, I just want a really complete backup solution. It should backup pretty much everything I have on my SD Card.
I already have Titanium Backup Pro and upuntil now I thought it was complete, but after completely wiping my SD Card in an attempt to install the latest RUU (which didn't work btw, but that's off topic...) and copying my Titanium Backup-stuff from a computer backup I realized it's really really incomplete. To be honest I'm not at all sure what it even is backing up... maybe my Titanium is just set wrong?
So what happened is this... like I said my SD Card was wiped but I had previously backed up Titanium to my Dropbox and pushed the whole folder to my phone after the wipe. However none of my settings for Nova Launcher were saved. My Nova settings back up was not saved. Passwords for Google, Facebook, Dropbox etc were not saved. Data from Swiftkey was not saved. Kakao Talk and SMS messaging history was not saved.
Like I said, I'm not sure what actually was saved...
I don't really mind, maybe even prefer, if I could use my computer to store these backups instead of the SD since I don't always have a lot of space left on my device.
(I think I got the filesystem thing and updating to the latest RUU didn't work - that's what landed me in this situation to begin with by the way.)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Even if you pushed the whole folder back to your phone...did you actually restore the app/data using Titanium afterwards? Pushing the back-up folder back to your phone just means Titanium can access it. It doesn't restore everything unless you actually do so using Titanium.
Otherwise, making a nandroid backup using CWM recovery takes a perfect snapshot of your phone at that moment. So your texts will all be in place, passwords, settings etc. will all be as they are now. Of course, you can't really flash your nandroid over a new ROM just to restore app data, but it allows you to revert your phone back to its original state before flashing (like in your above scenario where you had a failed RUU installation)

poofish said:
Even if you pushed the whole folder back to your phone...did you actually restore the app/data using Titanium afterwards? Pushing the back-up folder back to your phone just means Titanium can access it. It doesn't restore everything unless you actually do so using Titanium.
Otherwise, making a nandroid backup using CWM recovery takes a perfect snapshot of your phone at that moment. So your texts will all be in place, passwords, settings etc. will all be as they are now. Of course, you can't really flash your nandroid over a new ROM just to restore app data, but it allows you to revert your phone back to its original state before flashing (like in your above scenario where you had a failed RUU installation)
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Click to collapse
Hi, thanks for your reply.
Yes I did restore. When I backup I do the full backup thingie in batch operations and when I restore I do the restore apps and system data + restore app data.
Yeah, I was thinking of Nandroid too but doesn't that just do non-SD card? I'm very new to Android but isn't most of the stuff I actually care about (app data and such) on the SD?

titanium doesn't restore system bits by default and google/facebook/dropbox is integrated into the OS.
You CAN force it to I believe but it WILL break things if you change your ROM at all.
IN my mind a small issue doesn't take long to sign back into those services as long as all your apps and data is intact thats all good.
If you have the filesystem thing I STRONGLY SUGGEST you up to 1.29.xyz.11 before you do any more custom rom/CWM work. Even relock/RUU, OTA then unlock and go. I had very bad experiences with this bug.

wintermute000 said:
titanium doesn't restore system bits by default and google/facebook/dropbox is integrated into the OS.
You CAN force it to I believe but it WILL break things if you change your ROM at all.
IN my mind a small issue doesn't take long to sign back into those services as long as all your apps and data is intact thats all good.
If you have the filesystem thing I STRONGLY SUGGEST you up to 1.29.xyz.11 before you do any more custom rom/CWM work. Even relock/RUU, OTA then unlock and go. I had very bad experiences with this bug.
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Click to collapse
Hi. Thanks for your reply.
I totally would upgrade to the RUU if HTC there wasn't this small issue of the RUU not working. I live and bought my phone in Sweden and my CID confirms it's a european phone - however when I run the RUU it formats the phone and transfers about half the ROM then setup says "nope, wrong ROM." and leaves me with a dysfunctional OS. I'm also on a Mac so I have to run Windows 7 in VM Ware Fusion and starting that stupid RUU-file and everything takes AGES. I've already spent the better part of a day and night trying to get it to work and if I'm opening that RUU one more time with VM Ware if it doesn't work I think I'm gonna hang myself. So very very very sick and tired of that bullcrap. So... for now I'm either waiting for access to a Windows computer so I can try all of the RUUs and see if my phone's transmutated into the wrong region OR I'm awaiting an S-OFF mod so I don't need to use RUU.
As for the logins and such, it's not only google/facebook/dropbox. It's also Twitter, Evernote, Swiftkey and well... pretty much everything. Chrome seems to be logged in. AnkiDroid didn't get to save it's data (which luckily is saved in the cloud... and backed up manually).
Google Music offline data would be nice to keep to since it's pretty slow to sync. Plus I have to look-up what I actually want everytime I reflash.
Also, if I'm only flashing an upgrade to my current ROM must I really enter all the passwords again anyway?

kaminix said:
Hi. Thanks for your reply.
I totally would upgrade to the RUU if HTC there wasn't this small issue of the RUU not working. I live and bought my phone in Sweden and my CID confirms it's a european phone - however when I run the RUU it formats the phone and transfers about half the ROM then setup says "nope, wrong ROM." and leaves me with a dysfunctional OS. I'm also on a Mac so I have to run Windows 7 in VM Ware Fusion and starting that stupid RUU-file and everything takes AGES. I've already spent the better part of a day and night trying to get it to work and if I'm opening that RUU one more time with VM Ware if it doesn't work I think I'm gonna hang myself. So very very very sick and tired of that bullcrap. So... for now I'm either waiting for access to a Windows computer so I can try all of the RUUs and see if my phone's transmutated into the wrong region OR I'm awaiting an S-OFF mod so I don't need to use RUU.
As for the logins and such, it's not only google/facebook/dropbox. It's also Twitter, Evernote, Swiftkey and well... pretty much everything. Chrome seems to be logged in. AnkiDroid didn't get to save it's data (which luckily is saved in the cloud... and backed up manually).
Google Music offline data would be nice to keep to since it's pretty slow to sync. Plus I have to look-up what I actually want everytime I reflash.
Also, if I'm only flashing an upgrade to my current ROM must I really enter all the passwords again anyway?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not sure if its not vmware thats breaking your RUU..... you can check your CID in fastboot and verify, if its supposed to work then its supposed to work, its vmware breaking it.
Hey at least you can flash a ROM right? 10 minutes entering passwords again is a lot less problems than a lot of people have encountered (including me, I got a corrupted super laggy file system IO after CWM and the disappearing SD card space bug hit at once).
As for nandroid, yes it doesn't touch your sd card but otherwise its 1:1 I've always gotten back from a nandroid with everything exactly as it was

wintermute000 said:
Not sure if its not vmware thats breaking your RUU..... you can check your CID in fastboot and verify, if its supposed to work then its supposed to work, its vmware breaking it.
Hey at least you can flash a ROM right? 10 minutes entering passwords again is a lot less problems than a lot of people have encountered (including me, I got a corrupted super laggy file system IO after CWM and the disappearing SD card space bug hit at once).
As for nandroid, yes it doesn't touch your sd card but otherwise its 1:1 I've always gotten back from a nandroid with everything exactly as it was
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Click to collapse
Maybe. But it's very strange that VM Ware would be breaking a RUU isn't it?
Either way it means I need access to a Windows computer, either because VM Ware is breaking or because it's too darn slow. Indeed I have checked my CID in fastboot and it does say euro (well, I don't remember the CID itself but it correlated to euro).
Thanks for all your help. Greatly appreciated.

no probs good luck
edit: are you sure you are unbranded. If you are branded (Carrier handset) you need the carrier's RUU
its not that strange vmware breaks it, you are doing something that requires low level write access via USB.

[Q] help recovering with TWRP after failed ROM flash

I've found myself stuck trying to flash a ROM. I'm a newbie, this was my first attempt at something like this, I though I read enough about the process but I guess I screwed up something. I will try to be to the point.
Phone: Samsung Galaxy S3 AT&T i747
Rooted phone with Casual, installed ROM Toolbox and purchased the pro upgrade.
installed TWRP 2.5 and made a nandroid backup, the only place this backup existed was in internal storage.
used ROM toolbox to backup user apps and user data
selected cyanogenmod 10.1 RC5 from within ROM Toolbox and there was a requester for gapps and a checked the box for that also. When the DL was complete I installed the ROM queue with those two items and I checked the boxes Wipe Data & Cache and Wipe dalvic-cache.
Phone went to recovery mode (i guess) and appeared to clear the memory and load the new rom, the phone rebooted and I got the cyanogenmod boot screen but then it went to a requester saying:
Unfortunately , the process com.google.process.gapps has stopped.
When you hit ok you get:
Unfortunately, setup wizard has stopped.
this requester never goes away, just keeps popping up when you hit ok.
So I removed the battery and booted the phone in recovery mode and try to restore but the restore nandroid file in not shown. If I hit the center button in the restore window it says "updating partition details" but never returns.
Whenever you power it up normally now you end up in this gapps loop.
My searching suggested I may have tried to install the wrong version of google apps somehow. What are my options for trying to recover from this? Does my backup still exist somewhere?

If process.gapps is your only warning you can try to reflash the gapps zip from here. http://goo.im/gapps/gapps-jb-20130301-signed.zip If this does not fix your problem, you will have to head deeper into the rabbit hold
You can look for your back with a file explorer. Should be in sdcard/TWRP/BACKUPS/******** (random number). If you dont see them here, check your ext-sd in the same location. If you don't see them, they are gone. Do a Nandroid backup now just to be sure you have one. You should chose to back it up to external in TWRP. As for your FC problem, it would appear that you have not wiped fully. You will likely need to factory reset. the problem is this will remove everything. Titanium back up is a great product for situations like this. If you have used it, you can transfer your backup from the internal storage while connected to your pc. Also copy your DCIM folder as it will contain your photos. This is why you will need to do another Nandroid, because worst case scenario, you can just restore this one.

Thanks for the reply. I will try to reflash the gapps file from the external as soon I can download it, the site is having some trouble right now. I made another Nandroid of the phones current state and stored it to external. I did also have Titanium backup and had backups of the whole system with it. Unfortunately they are also only on the internal storage.

Re-installing the gapps zip file off the extSD from within TWRP did the trick. All the data and backups I created are also still there and are now backed up in several places.
Something that compounded the problem was the 64GB sd card I have for the phone. I was not able to mount it on either of my linux mint machines or an XP machine. Some oddness with the exFAT file system on it, I used a 4GB card I had laying around and it worked fine.
Thank you for the help, the phone is now running CM which is what I wanted and I learned a few things too.

theaxis695 said:
Re-installing the gapps zip file off the extSD from within TWRP did the trick. All the data and backups I created are also still there and are now backed up in several places.
Something that compounded the problem was the 64GB sd card I have for the phone. I was not able to mount it on either of my linux mint machines or an XP machine. Some oddness with the exFAT file system on it, I used a 4GB card I had laying around and it worked fine.
Thank you for the help, the phone is now running CM which is what I wanted and I learned a few things too.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I just bought a 64GB card as well. You may be having troubles mounting it due to a partition that comes factory in the SD. If this is the case, you can look at post #57 on the following page http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1915385&page=6
It helped me tremendously.

TWRP Restore Error 255

Team,
I just recently bought a Google Pixel and was attempting to transfer my contacts and messages and stuff from my HTC One M8 to my Google Pixel. However, my HTC One M8 was still on KitKat (4.4.2) and would not work with the transfer tool. So then I said let me take a TWRP backup of my phone before i start attempting to update it.
I attempted to download a rom to flash via TWRP but it did not work so I naturally tried to restore back to the TWRP backup I took.
Except now everytime I try to restore the backup I took all I get is extractTarFork() process ended with ERROR: 255
I have attempted to google all day with no luck.
Anyone dealt with this and have resolved it?
Thanks!

bef349 said:
Team,
I just recently bought a Google Pixel and was attempting to transfer my contacts and messages and stuff from my HTC One M8 to my Google Pixel. However, my HTC One M8 was still on KitKat (4.4.2) and would not work with the transfer tool. So then I said let me take a TWRP backup of my phone before i start attempting to update it.
I attempted to download a rom to flash via TWRP but it did not work so I naturally tried to restore back to the TWRP backup I took.
Except now everytime I try to restore the backup I took all I get is extractTarFork() process ended with ERROR: 255
I have attempted to google all day with no luck.
Anyone dealt with this and have resolved it?
Thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Did you try updating TWRP? I had something like this happen a few years ago with my S3 and updating my recovery fixed it.

xunholyx said:
Did you try updating TWRP? I had something like this happen a few years ago with my S3 and updating my recovery fixed it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yep, I had updated to twrp 3.0.2.0...still no luck
there has to be a way to fix this

so now even more weird. I downloaded Titanium Backup to try and extract from my TWRP backup, and nothing is there!
how the f is that possible!? does this mean my data is forever gone?

NoCall log, you should backup your calls with CALL LOG BACKUP & RESTORE apk from play store.Messages,you should backup with SMS BACKUP AND RESTORE apk from market(witch also can make a backup of all your sms/mms & call log!!!),so it's an one app for all.Both app make folders on your internal/sd memory that contain files selected by name and date,and you can just transfer this folders from M8 to Pixel and download those apps from playstore on your new Pixel phone,and restore calls/sms..About Titanium restore,isn't M8 ARM phone and Pixel is ARM64(or x86,I'm not sure)?so you can't restore those apps in TB cuz they're different versions with diferent screen DPI,and I suppose they won't work or TB gives you error cuz of that.You can only restore data from TB ,and it's very probable that some of those "restore' s" will give you problem due thing I sad in upper text and also cuz of big difference in Android versions(4.4>7.0+).
I hope you understand what I try to say,English is not my language,and I'm just trying to help you.I didn't by Pixel yet,I plan to,and this is what I would use in mind doing those transfers and restore procedure.
I had LGG4(ARM64),I transfered all my TB folder from M8(ARM),and when restoring ARM>ARM64 ,many of them force closed or mail function.But ONLY data restore allways worked on already installed app.
And about your error and problems on m8 with TWRP,yes try with some other and maybe older versions of TWRP(if m8 is on 4.4.4 ,then maybe latest recoveryes have problem to do backup and restore.In the end,try to flash stock RUU for your version on it,then TWRP+superuser,to try to fix all.BUT BEFORE Ruu Move all your TB and other data from internal memory/sd to computer or some other external drive-in case you lost or overwrite your data on phone.
Maybe someone will point you in right direction,maybe someone already had that problem.
Sent from my HTC One M8 [6.0 Gpe]

shawek said:
NoCall log, you should backup your calls with CALL LOG BACKUP & RESTORE apk from play store.Messages,you should backup with SMS BACKUP AND RESTORE apk from market(witch also can make a backup of all your sms/mms & call log!!!),so it's an one app for all.Both app make folders on your internal/sd memory that contain files selected by name and date,and you can just transfer this folders from M8 to Pixel and download those apps from playstore on your new Pixel phone,and restore calls/sms..About Titanium restore,isn't M8 ARM phone and Pixel is ARM64(or x86,I'm not sure)?so you can't restore those apps in TB cuz they're different versions with diferent screen DPI,and I suppose they won't work or TB gives you error cuz of that.You can only restore data from TB ,and it's very probable that some of those "restore' s" will give you problem due thing I sad in upper text and also cuz of big difference in Android versions(4.4>7.0+).
I hope you understand what I try to say,English is not my language,and I'm just trying to help you.I didn't by Pixel yet,I plan to,and this is what I would use in mind doing those transfers and restore procedure.
I had LGG4(ARM64),I transfered all my TB folder from M8(ARM),and when restoring ARM>ARM64 ,many of them force closed or mail function.But ONLY data restore allways worked on already installed app.
And about your error and problems on m8 with TWRP,yes try with some other and maybe older versions of TWRP(if m8 is on 4.4.4 ,then maybe latest recoveryes have problem to do backup and restore.In the end,try to flash stock RUU for your version on it,then TWRP+superuser,to try to fix all.BUT BEFORE Ruu Move all your TB and other data from internal memory/sd to computer or some other external drive-in case you lost or overwrite your data on phone.
Maybe someone will point you in right direction,maybe someone already had that problem.
Sent from my HTC One M8 [6.0 Gpe]
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Click to collapse
Thank you for your reply; I wish I had asked before attempting.
Here is what I see from the bootloader screen in case it helps --
*** UNLOCKED ***
M8_WLV PVT SHIP S-OFF
CID-VZW__001
HBOOT-3.18.0.0000
RADIO-1.09.20.0702
OpenDSP-v38.2.2-00542-M8974.0311
OS-2.21.605.2
eMMC-boot 2048MB
Aug 7 2014,20:26:27.26992
--
I took the full backup of my M8 using some version like TWRP v2.8.0.? I tried to restore the backup and it kept throwing me that error. So I said, lets try to flash the latest version of TWRP and that is what I did. I attempted restoring through the latest TWRP but still I get the same error. I have also tried to extract the backup using Cygwin with no luck. Titanium Backup also does not see it as a valid backup.
I am still on Android 4.4.2 (I had a backup from 2014 I was able to restore to in the meantime and is rooted).
The only place the data from my M8 is, is in the TWRP backup file which refuses to restore. All data on the phone was formatted and overwritten as I tried to flash a newer rom on it with no success. I have not tried to restore the data to my pixel and will not do so. All I need to do is restore the M8 backup to the M8 and try the methods you listed but I cannot get past this TWRP error. Or, get the backup to extract properly without throwing errors so that I can get the appropriate .db files from within
I am sure there is a fix involved with TWRP or is my wishful thinking sore out of luck?

I had this problem and it took me two days to resolve it. I had a good backup and I know it was good because I had used it several times and it worked. But then after doing some system installs I got the error 255. I tried several things to fix it and nothing worked and I really did not want to lose my backup. What did work for me was to use TWRP wipe function to FORMAT the phone. Wiping or factory reset did not work. I lost the contents of my internal SD card but I was able to transfer most to my external SD card. You could also connect the phone with a cable to a computer and use the pull command in ADB to backup the contents f the internal SD card. Given the choice between losing the SD card and the data files I come to lose some of the SD card. Anyway, a FORMAT worked when nothing else did. I read that this error is caused by a lack of space. When I checked the log it seemed that the restore was failing with a particular file which misled me to thinking I had to remove the corrupt file, but since after the format I was able to restore without any problem, it would seem that there was no corrupt data. Hope this helps someone.