Hi all,
So I've been on paranoid android for the past few months, and I had to revert back to stock for work reasons tonight; it's been a while since I've done my routine backups.
Having made my standard nandroid backup and restored to stock via ODIN, I was horrified to discover that none of my stored nandroid backups would work, running into system/data restore errors every time. I've just read that clockworkmod uses a new process that keeps each individual backups small but requires the presence of a .blob file of sorts, which must have gotten erased when I flashed stock. I checked the size of my nandroid backups and sure enough, they were only around 20 megs; it looks like my internal memory was wiped clean.
My questions are: is everything pretty much gone? And if so, WTF is the point of nandroids if they're no longer self-contained backups? If the devs indeed made changes that led to this, it reeks of inconsiderateness, if not just plain ineptitude.
I apologize in advance if I'm venting or missed something obvious, but I've been at this for a while now and exhaustion is just turning into frustration.
Thanks for your feedback/help.
Blob backups are incremental. Tar backups are full.
When CWM 6 was released, the devs made blob the default backup format. Later versions changed it back to tar.
You can manually change this setting through the CWM options.
As far as your backups being hosed, its tough to say without having the device in front of me. Are you attempting to restore with the same version that created the backup?
For what it's worth, I mirror your opinion about incremental backups being a terrible idea.
Aerowinder said:
Blob backups are incremental. Tar backups are full.
When CWM 6 was released, the devs made blob the default backup format. Later versions changed it back to tar.
You can manually change this setting through the CWM options.
As far as your backups being hosed, its tough to say without having the device in front of me. Are you attempting to restore with the same version that created the backup?
For what it's worth, I mirror your opinion about incremental backups being a terrible idea.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks; I did try multiple recovery versions including older ones, but the internal memory was wiped since I formatted system so I'm pretty sure everything's gone. Clockwork has been such a useful tool but I really have to wonder what they were thinking when they did this, ugh.
C'est la vie
Related
EDIT: I found the answer! It is true! When I was finally able to get into the system and load clockwork, it worked - I found my Nandroid backup.
So I was using Clockword and I nandroided... subsequently changed to Amon and then messed around with some kernel changes... it didn't work.
So, I tried to Nandroid back *but cannot find the backup I made today* I can only find one that is a couple of days old...
I was wondering, are the Nandroid files stored differently based on the recovery? I am hoping that is the case although it seems unlikely, because I want the one I just saved tonight... Help!
Thanks!
I'm new to Rooting and I was wondering if I flashed lets say to a new rom weather it is 2.2 or 2.1 and I don't like it or something dosen't work. Can I just flash the most current nandroid backup to return or do I have to flash the old rom that I was using then the nandroid backup on top of that ??
Using Rooted Evo with OMJ update 147.651.1
You sure can as long as the new ROM you flash is also a rooted ROM.
So basically I can jump from rom to rom to see what I like and just flash my backup to return to the original.... Cool.thanks
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App
Exactly
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App
Just returned to a nand backup last night. First time ever and worked fine...(I did a titanium backup first as had messages and app changes.)
How perfect, a simple search answered my exactl question.
I can run three roms and as long asI refresh my nandroids before flipping to another to restore I will miss very little. Only issue I can think of is let's say I run stock rooted for a week, and flip to a nandroid of CM6 for a week, then back to stock rooted...I would not have text messages from that time. I can fix that with TiBackup.
Am I missing anything? And, thanks to the people making me do all this stuff to my phone
uniquenameevo said:
How perfect, a simple search answered my exactl question.
I can run three roms and as long asI refresh my nandroids before flipping to another to restore I will miss very little. Only issue I can think of is let's say I run stock rooted for a week, and flip to a nandroid of CM6 for a week, then back to stock rooted...I would not have text messages from that time. I can fix that with TiBackup.
Am I missing anything? And, thanks to the people making me do all this stuff to my phone
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nope you havent missed anything Thats what i do all the time I believe for a certain period of time something else backs up texts as well because i often get all my texts back after a few minutes even those after the nandroid.
I've seen people having issues when using Titanium to restore apps and data from a 2.1 backup to 2.2 rom and vice versa. I think if you're just cycling between 2.2 roms, you should be ok though.
All I needed to know, thanks!
I'll only rotate 2.2 roms, no need to look back, but I appreciate that note also.
fachadick said:
I've seen people having issues when using Titanium to restore apps and data from a 2.1 backup to 2.2 rom and vice versa. I think if you're just cycling between 2.2 roms, you should be ok though.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I use MyBackup to backup APKS+DATA when jumping from 2.1 to 2.2 and vice versa ROMS without issue. Love it, love it.
fachadick said:
I've seen people having issues when using Titanium to restore apps and data from a 2.1 backup to 2.2 rom and vice versa. I think if you're just cycling between 2.2 roms, you should be ok though.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have been cycling between the 2 a LOT here is what i have found works. when you select to restore all apps/data look through the list and uncheck all the 2.1 system apps (ie checkin_update 2.1, google_search_update 2.1) once you do this you can restore everything else no problem. I have used ths method at least 10 times with no issues back and forth. If you backed up on 2.2 do the same thing just uncheck the 2.2 version of this information.
Can someone clarify the difference between backing up via:
#1 Nandroid
#2 Titanium Backup
What exactly is or isn't backed up? I'm assuming Nandroid misses certain things otherwise no one would use TB?
berardi said:
Can someone clarify the difference between backing up via:
#1 Nandroid
#2 Titanium Backup
What exactly is or isn't backed up? I'm assuming Nandroid misses certain things otherwise no one would use TB?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
titanium backup is just for apps
nandroid restore is like restoring an image of your hard drive to your pc. it not only restores the apps, but the entire ROM (barring radio and wimax radio).
i.e., you have a ROM going. you use titanium backup to backup your apps. then, do a nandroid backup and flash an entire new ROM. then, you could use titanium backup to put the apps back on. then, you would use nandroid restore to go back to the old ROM, completely. with nandroid, you can flip-flop between ROMs with everything that you had when you backed it up.
timothydonohue said:
titanium backup is just for apps
nandroid restore is like restoring an image of your hard drive to your pc. it not only restores the apps, but the entire ROM (barring radio and wimax radio).
i.e., you have a ROM going. you use titanium backup to backup your apps. then, do a nandroid backup and flash an entire new ROM. then, you could use titanium backup to put the apps back on. then, you would use nandroid restore to go back to the old ROM, completely. with nandroid, you can flip-flop between ROMs with everything that you had when you backed it up.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you so much that makes it quite clear! I was struggling with that for a while
So Titanium Backup backs things up that are generally able to be carried from one ROM to the next without problem? I noticed that it also does backup system settings (notifications, etc) which is great. These things generally won't corrupt a new ROM file right?
So with 2.2 backing up apps and their data, the main draw of TB would be the backing up of system settings?
How long does it take to complete a nandroid restore? I tried to restore a backup yesterday and it was taking over three hours! I said f' it and pulled out the battery, luckily I was able to boot into recovery and wipe/flash fresh's 2.2 ROM from scratch.
XevoX said:
How long does it take to complete a nandroid restore? I tried to restore a backup yesterday and it was taking over three hours! I said f' it and pulled out the battery, luckily I was able to boot into recovery and wipe/flash fresh's 2.2 ROM from scratch.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Should only take 5 minutes or so, about as long as it takes to flash a new ROM.
berardi said:
Thank you so much that makes it quite clear! I was struggling with that for a while
So Titanium Backup backs things up that are generally able to be carried from one ROM to the next without problem? I noticed that it also does backup system settings (notifications, etc) which is great. These things generally won't corrupt a new ROM file right?
So with 2.2 backing up apps and their data, the main draw of TB would be the backing up of system settings?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, but it could potentially be problematic to just start restoring things in bulk from a TB backup between different ROMs, even if they are the same base build. Read flipz's rant on the subject.
I have done a quick search on this but didn't come up with anything that refers to my specific problem.
I did two backups tonight.. one before I went back to stock w/root and one about ten minutes ago once I got back to almost where I was before going back to stock.
Neither one of them are showing up in the menu on CWM recovery?!? I did a Titanium Backup as well as the nandroid bu so I was at least able to get my data back but I really wanted to restore the first backup I made this evening before I had issues and had to restore an older backup... what I'm wondering is where are the backups? I looked in the clockworkmod/backup folder on the sd card and nothing from tonight shows up.. just my previous bu I made before flashing a ROM. Any help?
No ideas huh?
I just did two Nandroids in Rouges custom recovery based on CWM. It's CWM based so I assume this is going to be the same.
OK! Now I would assume they would/should end up the clockworkmod folder but my phone keeps putting them in /emmc/emmc/bmmc/*
I went into that folder, found the two I just did and moved them over to clockworkmod/backup/* and my recovery instantly saw them and I was able to restore to them.
Not sure why this is the way it is, maybe someone else can shed some light?
Like the previous poster mentioned, sometimes different versions/builds of CWM store their backups in different directories. When backups don't show up, usually the backups are all there, just CWM isn't looking for them there.
You may have gotten different versions of CWM inadvertently by installing a ROM that included a kernel with a different version/build of CWM.
If you manually move the backup directory to the place where your current CWM is expecting them, they'll be seen again.
I'm currently running 4.1.2 on my GN. When I do a CWR backup, it runs really quick, almost too quick when completing the backup. When I go in root explorer to check the size of the backup, it's really small. My questions is that when you do a backup using CWR, does it back up? I thought it would backup the whole device or current ROM right? Am I missing something?
Thanks
Backup feature of latest cwm versions is incremental. Each time you backup, it will backup stuff that was changed after the last one. Seems a bit like git, in a way.
Sent from my i9250
bk201doesntexist said:
Backup feature of latest cwm versions is incremental. Each time you backup, it will backup stuff that was changed after the last one. Seems a bit like git, in a way.
Sent from my i9250
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the info. I just wanted to make sure that if something happened and I needed to restore my ROM, everything would be restored with no problem.
HTC One V [CDMA], Virgin Mobile US, original (pre-OTA) radio version, TWRP recovery
Has anyone else experienced flakiness with Nandroid backups on this phone? All of them that I've done with major OS changes—even after factory reset—have failed to produce a working restore even though they were taken from a working state.
I'm also unable to get back my previously-working CM 10.1 ROM even though I followed the exact same procedures (with the same files) that I used to get it working before.
This has been happening since my first failed Nandroid restore trying to go back from CM 10.1 to the HTC Sense Nandroid backup I made before attempting CM 10.1 in the first place. I thought this was due to the Sense Nandroid having been made under the OTA-upgraded radio version (I had to use the stock rom.zip from the RUU to get CM 10.1 working at all), but now I'm not so sure. I get the HTC logo and angry red legal text indefinitely now with those setups.
I can't even get back to the Nandroid I made of the stock HTC Sense ROM right after I restored from the RUU's rom.zip.
Anyone have any idea what I'm doing wrong? Or is this model really just that much of a pain?
Are you flashing the correct kernel in fastboot after completing the restore? The recovery is not able to flash a kernel, that still needs to be done through fastboot, even with a nandroid restore.
riggerman0421 said:
Are you flashing the correct kernel in fastboot after completing the restore? The recovery is not able to flash a kernel, that still needs to be done through fastboot, even with a nandroid restore.
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Click to collapse
That's the boot.img, right? I did try flashing that after the restore didn't work the first time. No joy.
EDIT: Actually, that explains why some of my restores have failed, but not all of them.
EDIT 2: Mystery solved. I think. The Nandroid backup I took yesterday evening must be broken somehow. I noticed a few minutes ago that TWRP wasn't actually telling me that it finished restoring the backup—it was just taking me back to the home screen. I switched to CWM Recovery to grab a backup I took yesterday Morning, and that one worked.
So now I'm just left extremely disconcerted that I can't be certain my backups are reliable.
mynewshiny said:
That's the boot.img, right? I did try flashing that after the restore didn't work the first time. No joy.
EDIT: Actually, that explains why some of my restores have failed, but not all of them.
EDIT 2: Mystery solved. I think. The Nandroid backup I took yesterday evening must be broken somehow. I noticed a few minutes ago that TWRP wasn't actually telling me that it finished restoring the backup—it was just taking me back to the home screen. I switched to CWM Recovery to grab a backup I took yesterday Morning, and that one worked.
So now I'm just left extremely disconcerted that I can't be certain my backups are reliable.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I originally thought this was just an isolated incident, but it seems to be recurring. Several of the Nandroid backups I've made more recently, both within TWRP Recovery and via the Online Nandroid Backup app, seem to produce this result. (Fortunately, I have a known good backup that I've been able to use reliably.)
Is there a way to validate a Nandroid backup other than trying to restore from it? I don't mean comparing a hash (which is what I find using Google), but rather making sure that the original, uncorrupted file is valid for use as a backup.
As a side note, every backup I've done with CWM Recovery has been reliable, so my fallback plan is to switch to CWM. I just find TWRP easier to navigate.
mynewshiny said:
I originally thought this was just an isolated incident, but it seems to be recurring. Several of the Nandroid backups I've made more recently, both within TWRP Recovery and via the Online Nandroid Backup app, seem to produce this result. (Fortunately, I have a known good backup that I've been able to use reliably.)
Is there a way to validate a Nandroid backup other than trying to restore from it? I don't mean comparing a hash (which is what I find using Google), but rather making sure that the original, uncorrupted file is valid for use as a backup.
As a side note, every backup I've done with CWM Recovery has been reliable, so my fallback plan is to switch to CWM. I just find TWRP easier to navigate.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've played with recovery files before (se my signature) when cwm wasn't working well.
Basicly if you want to know that the backup is correct, you can only compare the hash codes (nandroid.md5) which is practically useless, because hases are made only for the .img files, so the OS itself is not protected like this, which is somehow ok, because the files are compressed to a .tar file, which also means it has it's own validation algorithms itself. So you can validate it if you can decompress the file (don't ask that how it could be done under windows) without errors, it should be allright.
I personnaly can say only this: use CWM 6. i-don't-know-which version (which is online now). There is a possibility for cache not mounting, and of course a backup to not be full, but as you can see from my signature, it can be "bypassed" so the OS will be backed up, and because we don't have S-OFF, it doesn't really matters. All of my backups from CWM is working (have at least 10 gigs at the time, from stock to EV).
I always use android file verifier by scary Allen (free market download). It has saved me many times!
Sent from my HTC One V using xda app-developers app
so as a conclusion, nandroid backup won't restore boot image? and the option in cwm advance restore>restore boot is useless? Me also always got stuck using nandroid restore
Ken-Shi_Kun said:
I've played with recovery files before (se my signature) when cwm wasn't working well.
Basicly if you want to know that the backup is correct, you can only compare the hash codes (nandroid.md5) which is practically useless, because hases are made only for the .img files, so the OS itself is not protected like this, which is somehow ok, because the files are compressed to a .tar file, which also means it has it's own validation algorithms itself. So you can validate it if you can decompress the file (don't ask that how it could be done under windows) without errors, it should be allright.
I personnaly can say only this: use CWM 6. i-don't-know-which version (which is online now). There is a possibility for cache not mounting, and of course a backup to not be full, but as you can see from my signature, it can be "bypassed" so the OS will be backed up, and because we don't have S-OFF, it doesn't really matters. All of my backups from CWM is working (have at least 10 gigs at the time, from stock to EV).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
sellersj27 said:
I always use android file verifier by scary Allen (free market download). It has saved me many times!
Sent from my HTC One V using xda app-developers app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Confirmed that comparing file hashes isn't helpful for this purpose—I just downloaded scaryalienware's AFV as suggested and ran it against several of my Nandroid backups. It said all of them succeeded, including at least one of which I know will not restore successfully. However, of interest is the fact that it took about half as much time to scan the known "bad" one, and further analysis shows that it's about half the size of the others. I'll have to make some more backups via the various mechanisms to confirm that the size is an indicator; it may be simply that I had fewer apps installed when making those backups.
Too bad there isn't some kind of Nandroid Restore Simulator. But even if there was, this phone probably wouldn't have enough memory to use it. Checking Nandroid backups in a VM would be awesome though!