Develop Bugs

Dev Challenge + Bounty

I love my Evo, but I am contently torn between fresh's sense rom and CM. I have a hole routine of going from one to the other and having to backup and reload every time I do. They both are great but have their strong and weak points. I know we will never have a perfect rom that satisfies everything so i would like to have the ability with a simple app, be able to switch between roms more easily. Much like Rom Manager but more stream-lined. have 2 different roms all set up and backed up on the phone and the app backup and load the other version and vice versa. but also have the ability to wipe out the previous back up when done switching. Im not asking for a fancy boot loader but more an automated Nandroid swapper. I have 20 bucks in it for someone to pull this off.

hi guys, what's going on in here?

WrongForum said:
hi guys, what's going on in here?
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Nice......

WrongForum said:
hi guys, what's going on in here?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
LOL
10 characters

$20? I really think a dev is worth more then that if he was going to obey your command. phew

WrongForum said:
hi guys, what's going on in here?
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Click to collapse
R....O....F....L....!

ricersniper said:
I love my Evo, but I am contently torn between fresh's sense rom and CM. I have a hole routine of going from one to the other and having to backup and reload every time I do. They both are great but have their strong and weak points. I know we will never have a perfect rom that satisfies everything so i would like to have the ability with a simple app, be able to switch between roms more easily. Much like Rom Manager but more stream-lined. have 2 different roms all set up and backed up on the phone and the app backup and load the other version and vice versa. but also have the ability to wipe out the previous back up when done switching. Im not asking for a fancy boot loader but more an automated Nandroid swapper. I have 20 bucks in it for someone to pull this off.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
$20 is not worth the pain in the ass of doing that...in fact I don't think an "app" could do that - ROM Manager is the closest you're going to get. Even if an app /was/ created, it still wouldn't be a quick jump from ROM to ROM, it would still take the same amount of time of restoring a nandroid. Next time, put a thread like this in the Themes and Apps section since you are requesting an application.

hey i dumped all my cash on the phone. if i had anymore than a 20 to my name i would throw it in i promise. besides their is enough interest in this i think others would be willing to throw in as well

this worked well last time >.>

ricersniper said:
I love my Evo, but I am contently torn between fresh's sense rom and CM. I have a hole routine of going from one to the other and having to backup and reload every time I do. They both are great but have their strong and weak points. I know we will never have a perfect rom that satisfies everything so i would like to have the ability with a simple app, be able to switch between roms more easily. Much like Rom Manager but more stream-lined. have 2 different roms all set up and backed up on the phone and the app backup and load the other version and vice versa. but also have the ability to wipe out the previous back up when done switching. Im not asking for a fancy boot loader but more an automated Nandroid swapper. I have 20 bucks in it for someone to pull this off.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hmm, so you want a Rom Manager clone does does 1 click backup/restore instead of 5/6 clicks on Rom Manager?

correct me if I'm wrong, but sounds to me like he wants, with one click, to backup his current rom AND switch to his alternate rom. that way every time he switches, his nandroid of the rom he switched from remains current. this would actually be pretty easy to write as a script I think. too bad I don't know how to do that
what would be even grander (and trickier) is to simultaneously have titanium backup do "redo backup" of user apps just prior to switching, and a "force restore" of user apps on bringing up the new rom, so even between nandroids, your user data stays current in your apps. how's that for dreaming.
no matter what, you've got the wait time to do all the backups. really, the better solution would be to run a separate version of android from an alternate location, like we used to do on the vogue. I used to be able to have 3 simultaneous bootable versions of android; one on nand, one on ext2, and one on the regular SD card. i could boot into each of them at will. now THAT'S what we need; I'd throw some money into the ability to boot from an ext3 partition.

tatnai said:
correct me if I'm wrong, but sounds to me like he wants, with one click, to backup his current rom AND switch to his alternate rom. that way every time he switches, his nandroid of the rom he switched from remains current. this would actually be pretty easy to write as a script I think. too bad I don't know how to do that
what would be even grander (and trickier) is to simultaneously have titanium backup do "redo backup" of user apps just prior to switching, and a "force restore" of user apps on bringing up the new rom, so even between nandroids, your user data stays current in your apps. how's that for dreaming.
no matter what, you've got the wait time to do all the backups. really, the better solution would be to run a separate version of android from an alternate location, like we used to do on the vogue. I used to be able to have 3 simultaneous bootable versions of android; one on nand, one on ext2, and one on the regular SD card. i could boot into each of them at will. now THAT'S what we need; I'd throw some money into the ability to boot from an ext3 partition.
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exactly....

WrongForum said:
hi guys, what's going on in here?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's too funny, because it's true.
I actually keep going back and forth between the same 2 roms, I have both backed up and I make a new backup before switching to the other. The whole process takes less than 10 minutes but it's a bit of a pain and it would be cool to have it automated. $20 isn't much but I'm sure something like this would do fairly well on the market.
Edit: I've never really used Rom Manager too much but I was just playing around with it and it does everything the OP wants (as another person said, in 5 steps instead of 1) I didn't realize you could backup right from there as well and delete your old backups.

jerryparid said:
Hmm, so you want a Rom Manager clone does does 1 click backup/restore instead of 5/6 clicks on Rom Manager?
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Click to collapse
he want's vmware for android... that's a pretty good idea actually. let you milk the cow before you buy it. i think i'll call there cost. service and see if they are interested

tatnai said:
correct me if I'm wrong, but sounds to me like he wants, with one click, to backup his current rom AND switch to his alternate rom. that way every time he switches, his nandroid of the rom he switched from remains current. this would actually be pretty easy to write as a script I think. too bad I don't know how to do that
what would be even grander (and trickier) is to simultaneously have titanium backup do "redo backup" of user apps just prior to switching, and a "force restore" of user apps on bringing up the new rom, so even between nandroids, your user data stays current in your apps. how's that for dreaming.
no matter what, you've got the wait time to do all the backups. really, the better solution would be to run a separate version of android from an alternate location, like we used to do on the vogue. I used to be able to have 3 simultaneous bootable versions of android; one on nand, one on ext2, and one on the regular SD card. i could boot into each of them at will. now THAT'S what we need; I'd throw some money into the ability to boot from an ext3 partition.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
nicholaaaas said:
he want's vmware for android... that's a pretty good idea actually. let you milk the cow before you buy it. i think i'll call there cost. service and see if they are interested
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
no what we need is dual boot. the vogue has it, and it's a freakin old phone. the kernel would just have to be modified to include the ability to boot from an alternate location (sdcard ext3 partition), and then you would modify a recovery image (armon's for example) to set which partition to boot from.
two bootable locations is the answer, really. it was the $hit on the vogue. kept my daily use on nand, and my tester on ext3. sweetness.

this is a simple concept. dual boot would be great but i would settle for just one touch switching. and with rom manager it is 5 steps but some of those steps involve rebooting and waiting for it. it shouldn't be to difficult.

jerryparid said:
Hmm, so you want a Rom Manager clone does does 1 click backup/restore instead of 5/6 clicks on Rom Manager?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I want a Pony! Perferably a Unicorn Pony!

tatnai said:
the kernel would just have to be modified to include the ability to boot from an alternate location
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Click to collapse
No this would require a modified bootloader and isn't simple at all. Especially considering that developing it would run a high risk of bricking the phone during testing.

[Q] How frequent do you make nandroid backups?

I seem to make one right before I decide to make a big change on the phone for example and rom update or theme update.
It's starting to be hard to keep up with the all of them. Anyone else got tips on how to manage them or if it's possible to make auto backups every week or so like titanium dose with apps?

I back up before making major changes. I only keep 1 or 2 recent backups on the SD card and will archive the rest onto my computer. I'll eventually clear them out, but there are a few worth keeping- such as the stock, rooted rom.

I just keep a fresh back up of the phone in stock with nothing on it besides stock apps and crap. Auto sync takes care of my contacts and I could care less about what texts I lose, most of my apps are on the sd card so I just load what I want back.

dietotherhythm said:
Auto sync takes care of my contacts and I could care less about what texts I lose
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Same here. I don't care much about losing any texts. I have it set up for auto delete at 50 anyway. I theme my phone on a daily basis. So I usually backup when I'm about to push a file into the framework. If the push was successful (phone doesn't go into a boot loop) then I delete the old backup I just made and backup again with the changes I just made. Otherwise, I also backup when flashing a ROM (obviously).

I back up when I flash a new ROM, a new theme, or make tweaks to certain files (like the anti-data-throttling technique). Beyond that, I have no need.
Sent from a Western Union telegram.

How do ya geniuses do the nandroid backups?
I've been tempted to flash cyanogen mod, but I see so many glitches, and since I'm no expert at this, I kinda doubt to do the rom flashing to my phone.

EdWRX said:
How do ya geniuses do the nandroid backups?
I've been tempted to flash cyanogen mod, but I see so many glitches, and since I'm no expert at this, I kinda doubt to do the rom flashing to my phone.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
rom flashing is easy, use Rom manager from market to flash clockwork(after rooting if not already there) and then download cyanogenmod as it is awesome stable right now and flash via rom manager.
it should then ask if you want to back up(nandroid) and/or wipe, check both options and you will have a backup
on original topic i have pro version of rom manager and so i have it set to make a backup every 4 days(but i don't delete very frequently and my 8GB sd card is not nearly big enough)

ive got my stock rom backed up from when i first rooted just incase i ever want to go back, Cm6.1 and then the current virtuous rom that im using. i really do need to clean my SD card up though, haha.

Like most, I made a nandroid as soon as I'd finished rooting, and then I keep one copy of my current ROM (Virtuous). If I'm going to make a major change or upgrade, I'll make a backup and keep it around for a few days, till I'm sure there are no bugs, and then keep the newer and delete the older backup. At most I have 3 backups, but normally I only have 2.

Honestly.... Never.
There's nothing a Nandroid can fix that flashing a new rom cant And the new rom gives you a nice change

once a week!

[Q] Advice on backup and rooting

First post and I have to say great forum here and lots of great information!!
I am a long time unix / linux user and work in the technology product development and I have been researching for about a week after updating to official ICS over Kies for information on backuping up my phone and rooting.
I had considered rooting before but never had a good reason really until I loaded the official ICS update and had to reset to get it working, losing all my apps / data. Kies was not cooperating so I did not get a good backup and it would not keep my app settings any way. This is when I found out that my old Blackberry and even iPhone had much more complete backup solutions that non-rooted Android. I have totally recovered the other devices without losing anything in the past so I thought Android would be a snap as well.
Any way to the point now. After searching I have found great work done by the members and I feel pretty comfortable proceeding to root my stock ICS and getting Titanium to do a full backup. I will fix my keyboard and few other things while at it.
My questions are:
1. When the next official release comes from ATT / Samsung will I have to reflash to the stock boot.img (found in another thread) to be able to get the upgrade and then root my phone again?
2. Once rooted, is it better to just come back here and get the updated ROM and flash manually?
3. Is the best way to achieve the complete backup solution I am looking for?
I am pretty happy with the stock ROMs but I want to be able to get a good and full backup going forward since it takes so long to reinstall everything. I could even live with the bloatware if I was confident I could completely restore at anytime.
Thanks in advance for any advice.
Roy

Titanium is good for backing up apps and data. If you want a complete back up, you'll want to make a nandroid backup with CWMR. As for the ROM part, it all depends on if you're happy with what you get stock or if you like customized things. I'm sick right now or I would go into detail.
sent from my captivate glide running ICS (NardROM 0.4 Rooted)

Shawn said:
Titanium is good for backing up apps and data. If you want a complete back up, you'll want to make a nandroid backup with CWMR. As for the ROM part, it all depends on if you're happy with what you get stock or if you like customized things. I'm sick right now or I would go into detail.
sent from my captivate glide running ICS (NardROM 0.4 Rooted)
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Click to collapse
Thanks Shawn. I saw a reference to nandroid but did not realize it was part of CWMR. Can I assume if I get CWMR loaded I will be able to backup my current apps / settings or will that just set me up for the next time? I have been sort of assuming once I get CWMR loaded and get root that I may lose my current settings.
Appreciate the reply especially while sick! Hope you feel better soon.

VideoRoy said:
Thanks Shawn. I saw a reference to nandroid but did not realize it was part of CWMR. Can I assume if I get CWMR loaded I will be able to backup my current apps / settings or will that just set me up for the next time? I have been sort of assuming once I get CWMR loaded and get root that I may lose my current settings.
Appreciate the reply especially while sick! Hope you feel better soon.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
A nandroid backup is more like an image backup of the flash, so you would have to restore the whole thing to get back any files you may have lost. It's mostly for backing up prior to flashing a new ROM, so if you don't like it you can go back to what you had easily.
If you want to back up pictures and things like that you should be able to plug the phone into a computer and mount the flash as a drive (I've done this on my Linux and Windows systems many times). Then you can copy the files you want to save to your computer, or copy a new ROM to the phone so you can flash it with CWMR.

You're welcome. Nandroid backups are for when your phone bootloops or is "bricked" or if you want to restore to something previous. For me, I use Titanium to backup all app data before flashing something and then make a Nandroid with CWMR. In my opinion its a good idea to use both so you're safe from any problems down the road.
sent from my captivate glide running ICS (NardROM 0.4 Rooted)

Shawn said:
You're welcome. Nandroid backups are for when your phone bootloops or is "bricked" or if you want to restore to something previous. For me, I use Titanium to backup all app data before flashing something and then make a Nandroid with CWMR. In my opinion its a good idea to use both so you're safe from any problems down the road.
sent from my captivate glide running ICS (NardROM 0.4 Rooted)
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mvi57 and Shawn,
Thanks guys, got it now. I will probably do both types of backups as well.
I think I understand the system a little better now. The recovery partition probably does not affect the bootloader or ROM so if I just replace it with CWMR I still boot the same and will not lose my current data. I am guessing the next official ROM will probably load fine but I would probably just have to root the phone again.
Thanks for putting up with the noob questions. I have not done embedded development before but some of the guys on team have so I have some terminology i need to get used to.

VideoRoy said:
mvi57 and Shawn,
Thanks guys, got it now. I will probably do both types of backups as well.
I think I understand the system a little better now. The recovery partition probably does not affect the bootloader or ROM so if I just replace it with CWMR I still boot the same and will not lose my current data. I am guessing the next official ROM will probably load fine but I would probably just have to root the phone again.
Thanks for putting up with the noob questions. I have not done embedded development before but some of the guys on team have so I have some terminology i need to get used to.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You will need to root again once you update. Replacing stock recovery with CWMR will not make you lose any data.
sent from my captivate glide running ICS (NardROM 0.4 Rooted)

VideoRoy said:
First post and I have to say great forum here and lots of great information!!
I am a long time unix / linux user and work in the technology product development and I have been researching for about a week after updating to official ICS over Kies for information on backuping up my phone and rooting.
I had considered rooting before but never had a good reason really until I loaded the official ICS update and had to reset to get it working, losing all my apps / data. Kies was not cooperating so I did not get a good backup and it would not keep my app settings any way.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's a hard lesson to learn that there were relatively easy solutions to avoid it :/ I as a fellow long time Linux user, I'm suprised!. I myself can not stand not having root access when I need it. I luckily have had Titanium Backup for quite some time now and it IS a life saver for many of your apps and settings! It's a must! I too had the issue of not being able to update via kies and assumed it was because my device was rooted, so in my frustrated lack of sleep mood I had going, I said meh all and grabbed easily accessible data off the memory and flashed the ICS from sammobile.com if i remember right. I've since flashed NardRom as well and am having some signal/sms issues. That being said, MAKE SURE you do a nandroid backup and don't get all anxious and overzealous like I did. If I am not mistaken and understand correctly, sometimes when flashing roms you may overwrite various signal related files like the modem or wireless? With a nandroid backup you can simply restore from that like nothing ever happened! Just follow directions to the T. I've yet to brick my SGH-i927 but I've bricked our captivates a few times

ZeroHour064 said:
It's a hard lesson to learn that there were relatively easy solutions to avoid it :/ I as a fellow long time Linux user, I'm suprised!. I myself can not stand not having root access when I need it. I luckily have had Titanium Backup for quite some time now and it IS a life saver for many of your apps and settings! It's a must! I too had the issue of not being able to update via kies and assumed it was because my device was rooted, so in my frustrated lack of sleep mood I had going, I said meh all and grabbed easily accessible data off the memory and flashed the ICS from sammobile.com if i remember right. I've since flashed NardRom as well and am having some signal/sms issues. That being said, MAKE SURE you do a nandroid backup and don't get all anxious and overzealous like I did. If I am not mistaken and understand correctly, sometimes when flashing roms you may overwrite various signal related files like the modem or wireless? With a nandroid backup you can simply restore from that like nothing ever happened! Just follow directions to the T. I've yet to brick my SGH-i927 but I've bricked our captivates a few times
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am with you all the way.
I have installed CWMR now and completed a nandroid backup. After tracking down the backup I copied to my laptop for safe keeping. Also installed the keyboard fix only and it worked fine. Later tonight I will give root a try with Titanium.
BTW I was having SMS issues with the stock ICS. No alerts and basic funky things. I have loaded Go SMS Pro and am happier not only fixing the app issues but giving me Group text mode so I am not an outcast with the rest of my iPhone family
Thanks for helping me get going here.

ICS has a bunch of issues, including the bad notifications.
sent from my captivate glide running ICS (NardROM 0.4 Rooted)

As others have posted. I back up all my information per app via Titanium backup and every few months I make a new Nandroid backup. This gives me the best of both worlds. A full backup that I can get back to via Nandroid backup and little backups from Titanium backup if I choose to uninstall and re-install an individual app later on in the future.

Just a few other tips from my recent experiences. Since the problems I was having with NardROM... an entire night with no text msgs from my ole lady got me pretty worried and I learned it was issues with my flash or the rom with my phone so I wiped it out and went back to the stock ICS. I also flashed the keyboard fix and have noticed no problems. I did flash the tether fix too but it's not working for me at the moment so I'll play with it later. I'm also using my regular Captivate as a secondary phone/toy using google voice and wireless so if I'm not getting anything on one # during testing or usage I will notice it and get it on the other phone.
Also, as a long time GOSMS user I like to try out the various features but I must warn you stay away from, or have a backup plan on top of it, if you purchase the 180-day premium features and utilize the local backup. I'm not fond of having things backed up to a cloud so like you I back up all my phone stuff to my server and desktops at home but running raid 5 (paranoid much?). The problem I had is when I restored all my text from the cloud after a flash and noticed the new local backup feature in a GOSMS update I thought hey i can do away with the cloud and use this right!? Wrong. I deleted the cloud backup without double checking and on this last flash, attempted to restore roughly 20k+ messages from the Gosms local backup feature and it errored out or froze the phone EVERY time I tried. Frantically searching through everything I had, I learned that Titanium Backup does do a backup typically of the related data, I beleive the listed backup is SMS/APN/MMS or something similar. You have to enable writing to /system in Titanium's settings. There's a howto on xda I beleive and google searches on restoring it. Another thing, if you have numerous backups and are playing around and i.e. have just flashed, installed Titaniumbackup and want to backup something before you restore it from an older version, MAKE SURE YOU HAVE CHANGED MAX # of BACKUPS FIRST, otherwise you have just overwritten your previous backup :crying:
*Correction* I'm using jayjayjoker2's debloated ICS 4.0.4 http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1843001

ZeroHour064 said:
Just a few other tips from my recent experiences. Since the problems I was having with NardROM... an entire night with no text msgs from my ole lady got me pretty worried and I learned it was issues with my flash or the rom with my phone so I wiped it out and went back to the stock ICS. I also flashed the keyboard fix and have noticed no problems. I did flash the tether fix too but it's not working for me at the moment so I'll play with it later. I'm also using my regular Captivate as a secondary phone/toy using google voice and wireless so if I'm not getting anything on one # during testing or usage I will notice it and get it on the other phone.
Also, as a long time GOSMS user I like to try out the various features but I must warn you stay away from, or have a backup plan on top of it, if you purchase the 180-day premium features and utilize the local backup. I'm not fond of having things backed up to a cloud so like you I back up all my phone stuff to my server and desktops at home but running raid 5 (paranoid much?). The problem I had is when I restored all my text from the cloud after a flash and noticed the new local backup feature in a GOSMS update I thought hey i can do away with the cloud and use this right!? Wrong. I deleted the cloud backup without double checking and on this last flash, attempted to restore roughly 20k+ messages from the Gosms local backup feature and it errored out or froze the phone EVERY time I tried. Frantically searching through everything I had, I learned that Titanium Backup does do a backup typically of the related data, I beleive the listed backup is SMS/APN/MMS or something similar. You have to enable writing to /system in Titanium's settings. There's a howto on xda I beleive and google searches on restoring it. Another thing, if you have numerous backups and are playing around and i.e. have just flashed, installed Titaniumbackup and want to backup something before you restore it from an older version, MAKE SURE YOU HAVE CHANGED MAX # of BACKUPS FIRST, otherwise you have just overwritten your previous backup :crying:
*Correction* I'm using jayjayjoker2's debloated ICS 4.0.4 http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1843001
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Great information thanks!!
The backups I am most worried about are all the system settings, app settings and data mostly. I am probably older than most folks here and I do not really text much except family and a few co-workers. I honestly never worried about backing up my SMS / MMS but I will check on my APNs because I had that problem on a Blackberry once. Email is where I store most important stuff and talk about paranoid I have multiple copies of my emails on different computers on different operating systems. 20 years working in storage will do that to you
I believe that if Google or Samsung even came up with a backup solution that did what Blackberry or Apple could do it would solve a lot and I probably would not even be working on this. Blackberry saved my bacon more than once with the complete backup they do in their clunky software and last year when my daughters iPhone would no longer power off, I was able to use iTunes to do a complete backup and she was up and running on a new phone in 15 mins exactly where she left off.
Thanks for the advice!

[Q] Strange flashing woes?

Just to preface, I have been flashing ROMs for 2 years now, and am by no means new to the game. However, I'll be the first to say that I'm not immune to making stupid mistakes. So if I'm being stupid, you can tell me and not hurt my feelings
I will give a history of what I have done with my phone since Monday after I picked it up, and some quirks I have noticed.
- Set up my phone, accounts etc
- Let Google backup/restore download and install all of my apps
- Installed OTA to ALJC
- Installed Note2 Toolkit on my PC, drivers load, adb recognizes.
- Rooted & Installed CWM recovery
- Flashed stock de-odexed ALJC
- Installed 5x6 launcher & ALJC 4x1 reboot options (rebooted and proceed to setup my homescreens, icons, etc.) (I noticed when trying to flash items from "internal" sd card, it says there are not any
- inserted my SD Card from my OG Epic (Titanium backups in place)
- Restored text messages from .xml file via TB
- None of the games I wanted to transfer data from would run after restoring data from my TB backups, had to clear data and apps run fine, except for NBA Jam (guessing b/c they were from a CM10 ROM and a different device)
-Got all my apps setup, wiped all the bogus data I got from my prior TB backups. After playing with the phone, running apps for several hours, did a full Titanium backup of my phone
- Booted to CWM & Saved a nandroid backup to external SD Card
- Flashed (dirty) ULE 1.0 ALJC Rom (I thought by flashing dirty, it would preserve all my data, apps, etc. = I was wrong)
- Attempted to restore all of my Titanium backups (only ~60% would restore...still trying to figure this out).
- Attempted to restore the backed up 5x6 launcher (with my screens/icons setup intact) via TB. This kind of worked, it definitely changed the icon setup, but it was NOT 5x6, and it did not have my previous layout (probably b/c it was trying to fit a 5x6 on a 4x4).
- Figured that the dirty flash screwed things up, so I would restore my nandroid and go back to square one, where I had stock deodexed with 5x6 & reboot options, and launcher screens intact. So I booted CWM and restored that nandroid.
- After restoring and rebooting, I'm not sure if anything happened at all. I had a 4x4 launcher, no reboot options, and several of my apps were missing (particularly, the ones that would not restore from TB before)
- Figured I aught to factory reset and then restore, same result as above.
- Currently downloading stock ALJ1 tar so I can start all over again
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I know this is long-winded, but I wanted to put it all out there in case I am doing something categorically wrong with my Note II, so I do not replicate this problem. It has always been the case that a nandroid backup gets me back EXACTLY where I was when I made it (on both my Touchpad & Epic). For whatever reason, this did not happen in this case, even after a factory reset/wipe.
Perhaps CWM isn't working properly? Perhaps I need to try TWRP so that I can manually wipe /system (as far as I can tell you can't manually do that in CWM, but if I understand correctly, this is done when you flash a ROM or restore a nandroid).
Am I doing something wrong? Also, why won't CWM see any of the files I downloaded to the internal memory? Several times now I have booted CWM and when I try to flashing things I downloaded, I have to reboot and move them to my external SD card so that CWM can see them.
Are there settings that are being saved to my external SD card that are causing problems (I highly doubt it)?
Thanks to any and all suggestions/guidance/advice.
Looking forward to learning more and more about these awesome devices.

MeetFace said:
Just to preface, I have been flashing ROMs for 2 years now, and am by no means new to the game. However, I'll be the first to say that I'm not immune to making stupid mistakes. So if I'm being stupid, you can tell me and not hurt my feelings
I will give a history of what I have done with my phone since Monday after I picked it up, and some quirks I have noticed.
I know this is long-winded, but I wanted to put it all out there in case I am doing something categorically wrong with my Note II, so I do not replicate this problem. It has always been the case that a nandroid backup gets me back EXACTLY where I was when I made it (on both my Touchpad & Epic). For whatever reason, this did not happen in this case, even after a factory reset/wipe.
Perhaps CWM isn't working properly? Perhaps I need to try TWRP so that I can manually wipe /system (as far as I can tell you can't manually do that in CWM, but if I understand correctly, this is done when you flash a ROM or restore a nandroid).
Am I doing something wrong? Also, why won't CWM see any of the files I downloaded to the internal memory? Several times now I have booted CWM and when I try to flashing things I downloaded, I have to reboot and move them to my external SD card so that CWM can see them.
Are there settings that are being saved to my external SD card that are causing problems (I highly doubt it)?
Thanks to any and all suggestions/guidance/advice.
Looking forward to learning more and more about these awesome devices.
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Well I personally use twrp and have had no issues so I cannot speak on your nandroid issues...I do know however that in twrp after selecting internal or external sd card, you sometimes have to manually navigate to the respective sdcard...as for your TB not seeing your back ups from your prior device, go to preferences< backup location< detect and select scan whole device
Sent from my SPH-L900 using xda app-developers app

Just to clarify your remarks to avoid confusion. I can clearly see my TB backups.
I did have to go and do those steps first. About only half of them would restore though. Kind of odd. Maybe some data corruption? Didn't matter if I did them one at a time or during batch mode. Also didn't matter which of the 3 processing modes I selected in TB. Once one of the offending backups was being processed in batch mode, the restore process would hang until I force stopped TB or rebooted.

How much free storage does your internal sd have remaining? I ask because my wife's s3 would do the same when it was below 1gig

Multiple GB, probably 7 or 8. I store everything on my external, music, pics, etc. Haven't had that much chance to fill up the internal yet =]

I don't know. ..Very irritating isn't

It is indeed. But that's the risk of being a flashaholic
...and of being a first-mover on a brand new device =]

Beginning to wonder if me rooting with SuperSu, and then flashing (dirty) ULE which uses superuser, may have caused any problems. Perhaps binaries were conflicting?

MeetFace said:
Just to clarify your remarks to avoid confusion. I can clearly see my TB backups.
I did have to go and do those steps first. About only half of them would restore though. Kind of odd. Maybe some data corruption? Didn't matter if I did them one at a time or during batch mode. Also didn't matter which of the 3 processing modes I selected in TB. Once one of the offending backups was being processed in batch mode, the restore process would hang until I force stopped TB or rebooted.
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Oh okay I see what you mean now...I have no idea whats going on there lol. ..I hope you can somehow get that figured out because I know how much it sucks to lose app Data
Sent from my SPH-L900 using xda app-developers app

I am really puzzled now, I just odined back to stock and then up through all rooting/etc to get to ULE again. Totally wiped everything. TB is still giving me fits. I'm assuming they backups were bad. Half work, half don't.
I was able to restore apps from a nandroid I made on my OG Epic a month ago. So that's helpful. I'm going to delete all my TB backups once I get everything situated and start fresh (possibly b/c I made backups while on an odexed ROM and restored them on a deodexed ROM?).
I think I'm going to stick with TWRP for now. I don't know if CWM was working properly at all, and TWRP has a few more features. TB wasn't able to see a single app to restore from the two CWM nandroids I made. Not sure what's up with that.

I was going to mention the codex stuff but it really shouldn't matter as you are backing up the data portion not the system. Still you might have a look at setting/storage. USB debug on ...all that jazz
Sent from my Nexus 7 using xda premium

Do you enable "compression" when doing nandroid backups on twrp?

Just wondering if you guys enable compression to save space when making nandroids on twrp. I have never done it and want to try but wanted to see how many people do it.
Thanks

stu5797 said:
Just wondering if you guys enable compression to save space when making nandroids on twrp. I have never done it and want to try but wanted to see how many people do it.
Thanks
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I do it every time. Why wouldn't you want your backups compressed? It lowers their size so you save some room on internal or external
Sent fromPH-L710 using xda app-developers app

evo4gnoob said:
I do it every time. Why wouldn't you want your backups compressed? It lowers their size so you save some room on internal or external
Sent fromPH-L710 using xda app-developers app
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Is there any downside to this? Have you successfully restored a backup after compressing it in this fashion?

hayzooos said:
Is there any downside to this? Have you successfully restored a backup after compressing it in this fashion?
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nope none that i see and yes i have restored the compressed backups before. Only problem is after you restore a compressed backup it gets uncompressed and goes back to the size it would be if you didnt compress it. But all you would have to do is delete it that backup and make a new compressed backup

well sure. it takes longer on both ends (compression and decompression) but its seriously minor. I always used it and restoring has never proven a problem yet.

Good deal, thanks for the feedback. I'm backing up right now and chose to compress it. I'll be interested to see how big it is compared to an older backup and how much space it actually saves.

I compress mine, longest its taken so far was 420seconds to do the whole setup with about 300apps installed. A basic backup of a rom takes me 190seconds. One thing I haven't noticed is my backups themself being decompressed after restore, but I don't pay much attention cuz I usually delete and make a fresh one just so its more current.
Sent from my SPH-L710

Any reason why this is not the default?

stu5797 said:
Any reason why this is not the default?
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Mine is enabled by default always has been on every device I've ever used twrp on
Sent from my SPH-L710

I use twrp on my gs3 and my note2. Neither have compressed as a default setting

Its enabled on my et4g, gs3, kindle fire and og evo4g I've never had to enable it, however the gs3 already had twrp on it so my dad may have enabled it on it and being as its always default on the others I didn't pay much attention. Twrp on the gs3 is a different build than my other devices they are all on twrp2.x and the gs3 is twrp3.1.0 so they may have disabled it by default on the newer builds
Sent from my SPH-L710

What do you have checked when backing up?
Hi..
Nice info..
What information do you have have Xd out when doing the nand?
I have Boot, Data, Modem, EFS, System .. What else should we have checked?
I use TWRP 2.3.3.2. on the Note 2 running CleanROM 4.0.5 and Jedi XP9

navyvet420 said:
Hi..
Nice info..
What information do you have have Xd out when doing the nand?
I have Boot, Data, Modem, EFS, System .. What else should we have checked?
I use TWRP 2.3.3.2. on the Note 2 running CleanROM 4.0.5 and Jedi XP9
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http://teamw.in/whattobackup

I would certainly not zip a nandroid backup (at least not the one you carry on your device in case of need). Besides taking more time and work for the process, there are two major drawbacks. Imagine the necessary storage space to be not sufficient for the decompression, you would have first to estimate the needed space to free, then search and decide which files to get rid of, while counting the sum it frees and then perform the unzip. Now the worst and most probable situation.. If you need a restore it's likely that you get a system failure. So what if wou're not able to decompress first?

Aerocap said:
I would certainly not zip a nandroid backup (at least not the one you carry on your device in case of need). Besides taking more time and work for the process, there are two major drawbacks. Imagine the necessary storage space to be not sufficient for the decompression, you would have first to estimate the needed space to free, then search and decide which files to get rid of, while counting the sum it frees and then perform the unzip. Now the worst and most probable situation.. If you need a restore it's likely that you get a system failure. So what if wou're not able to decompress first?
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Seriously dude? I think this topic has been asked answered and solved 4 to 5 years ago. So why bump a thread that has been dead for nearly half a decade?

madbat99 said:
Seriously dude? I think this topic has been asked answered and solved 4 to 5 years ago. So why bump a thread that has been dead for nearly half a decade?
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Oh my, your post makes me feel rather ashamed, sorry to have annoyed you
Since I didn't see it anywhere and you're nice to join on a dead thread please can you lead me where this have been "solved"?
Thanks much

Aerocap said:
Oh my, your post makes me feel rather ashamed, sorry to have annoyed you
Since I didn't see it anywhere and you're nice to join on a dead thread please can you lead me where this have been "solved"?
Thanks much
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Twrp has the option built in to enable compression. You don't zip it yourself. The answer is, it's simply a preference. It's also advised to save twrp backups off device, in external sd or flash drive, even on a PC. Device storage never enters the equation. You can restore backups directly from said storage devices.
So again, simply a preference. You didn't "annoy me. That's a fairly arrogant assumption. I just thought it odd to attempt to answer a question that no one has queried in years.

@madbat99 Of course there is also to save a backup somewhere else, I mentionned especially the one we carry for emergency after reading a previous post
Notorious said:
Only problem is after you restore a compressed backup it gets uncompressed and goes back to the size it would be if you didnt compress it.
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Aerocap said:
@madbat99 Of course there is also to save a backup somewhere else, I mentionned especially the one we carry for emergency after reading a previous post
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Emergency backups should be on external sd. What if /data is corrupted? Backup is lost. Who would ever run device storage so close to full that a decompressed backup wouldn't fit, if it fit while compressed? Your device would run horribly.
So many issues would be solved if people would just maintain healthy device habits. Don't run right at storage limits, keep backups on external sd.
I never compress my backups by the way. No need. But it's not because I don't have room for it to decompress. It's just an extra step that I have no use for.