TWRP Massive backup size... - OnePlus 3 Questions & Answers

Im on OOS and made a nandroid backup via TWRP (official)/ Backup size was 5 GB... So i thought this is regard to OOS. Then yesterday i flashed CM ROM and made a nandroid backup.Back up size was 5 GB.. What the hell. Then i looked in to both of OOS and CM TWRP backup folders. I've notice that those commom files on both backups are massive.."system_image_emmc" is 2.4 GB and "system.ext4" is 1GB .. What is this?Why this much of capacity? Is this normal for OP3 or am i doing something wrong?

In twrp, when in the backup section you can go to settings I believe and enable compression.

crazykas said:
Im on OOS and made a nandroid backup via TWRP (official)/ Backup size was 5 GB... So i thought this is regard to OOS. Then yesterday i flashed CM ROM and made a nandroid backup.Back up size was 5 GB.. What the hell. Then i looked in to both of OOS and CM TWRP backup folders. I've notice that those commom files on both backups are massive.."system_image_emmc" is 2.4 GB and "system.ext4" is 1GB .. What is this?Why this much of capacity? Is this normal for OP3 or am i doing something wrong?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
untick the system image option in twrp when making a backup of anything that doesn't need OTA compatibility. A system image backup will always be the same size because it's taking a backup of the entire /system so it basically makes the empty space take up space in the backup.

Mine is 7.08GB even without system image ?

StykerB said:
untick the system image option in twrp when making a backup of anything that doesn't need OTA compatibility. A system image backup will always be the same size because it's taking a backup of the entire /system so it basically makes the empty space take up space in the backup.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Should be system images of OOS vs CM be different capacities? Anyway, if i untick system image emmc, would be a problem when i restoring that backup?

crazykas said:
Should be system images of OOS vs CM be different capacities? Anyway, if i untick system image emmc, would be a problem when i restoring that backup?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
a system image takes a copy of the entire /system so even the empty space in /system will take up space in the image because the image needs to represent bit for bit the entire /system. A regular system backup intelligently stores the files from /system so it takes up less space but you lose compatibility with anything that requires bit for bit exact /system (basically only OTA's right now) but for any sorta custom rom use it's 100% fine.
You basically only cannot use an incremental OTA from Oneplus if you use a regular system backup.

Related

[Q] What does a nandroid backup contain?

When I perform a backup from recovery (or via a front-end such as ROM Manager), what exactly is saved?
Is it like a clone of a hard drive in the PC world?
Does it contain only data, and not the actual ROM?
How should I go about using such a backup when doing a restore? Should a ROM be installed first, followed by the restore? If so, must the ROM match the backup exactly -- that is, must it be the ROM under which the backup was performed in the first place?
kirkers said:
When I perform a backup from recovery (or via a front-end such as ROM Manager), what exactly is saved?
Is it like a clone of a hard drive in the PC world?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's a pretty close analogy. Only difference is I don't think it captures partitions...but I'm not sure about that. (It's not clear to me, for instance, if you did a nandroid of a phone with the EXT4 mod implemented and tried to install it on a phone without the EXT4 mod, exactly how that would play out.)
As an example, though, I took a nandroid of my stock phone immediately after I rooted it and got S-off. I then played around with various CM7, CM9, and JB ROMs for a weekend, but reloaded the stock nandroid Sunday night before going back to work on Monday. (I need a reliable phone for work.)
My phone was restored to exactly the way it was when I took the nandroid snapshot. I had to re-download a handful of app updates and email that had arrived since the time I took the nandroid to "catch up" to the present time, but that's all.
kirkers said:
When I perform a backup from recovery (or via a front-end such as ROM Manager), what exactly is saved?
Is it like a clone of a hard drive in the PC world?
Does it contain only data, and not the actual ROM?
How should I go about using such a backup when doing a restore? Should a ROM be installed first, followed by the restore? If so, must the ROM match the backup exactly -- that is, must it be the ROM under which the backup was performed in the first place?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It is everything on your phone at the current time when you made a backup. Including your rom, apps, files, boot animation and e.t.c.
Sent from my EVO using Tapatalk 2
Impact of EXT4 partition on nandroid backup + restore?
sully9292 said:
It is everything on your phone at the current time when you made a backup. Including your rom, apps, files, boot animation and e.t.c.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
MysticCobra said:
[The PC clone image is] a pretty close analogy. Only difference is I don't think it captures partitions...but I'm not sure about that. (It's not clear to me, for instance, if you did a nandroid of a phone with the EXT4 mod implemented and tried to install it on a phone without the EXT4 mod, exactly how that would play out.)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the clarifications and the personal experience story. It helps calm my nerves. :fingers-crossed: Now it is clear that the nandroid is a full snapshot, close to being a clone image.
Can anyone address MysticCobra's point about the EXT4 partition?
As a rule, I have followed ROM Manager app's recommendation to partition the sdcard to allow apps to be stored on it. This is what the EXT4 partition is designed to do, as far as I understand such things.
If I format the sdcard with EXT4 (which in my experience wipes out all data on the card), and then restore a nandroid that came from an older EXT4-formatted sdcard of the same size or smaller than the new sdcard, would the nandroid restoration go smoothly?
What would happen if the new sdcard did NOT have an EXT4 partition?
Thanks in advance for further advice.
:good: Cheers!
kirkers said:
Thanks for the clarifications and the personal experience story. It helps calm my nerves. :fingers-crossed: Now it is clear that the nandroid is a full snapshot, close to being a clone image.
Can anyone address MysticCobra's point about the EXT4 partition?
As a rule, I have followed ROM Manager app's recommendation to partition the sdcard to allow apps to be stored on it. This is what the EXT4 partition is designed to do, as far as I understand such things.
If I format the sdcard with EXT4 (which in my experience wipes out all data on the card), and then restore a nandroid that came from an older EXT4-formatted sdcard of the same size or smaller than the new sdcard, would the nandroid restoration go smoothly?
What would happen if the new sdcard did NOT have an EXT4 partition?
Thanks in advance for further advice.
:good: Cheers!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nandroid backup/restores don't touch the sdcard. They backup to the sdcard but the nandroid only handles /system, /data, /data/data, /cache, boot, and recovery.
The ext4 partition is not the same as the ext4 mod that MysticCobra mentioned. The mod converts /data, and /cache to ext4 and changes the ramdisk to mount them as ext4. The no data limit one also disables the mounting /data/data so the phone will share the apps and app data with a 750MB. Your app data is intact with the no data limit mod but a backup is still advised. No wipe updates don't touch the filesystem in /data or /cache but the mod may need to be flashed again for the ROM to boot correctly as the ramdisk is overridden on all updates. Technically with the normal data one you are good on later cm7 and ICS/JB ROMs as it's already ext4.
If you want to undo the mod the best thing is to wipe /data and /cache and reflash the ROM.
For further reading check the first link in the link below:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1623038

[Q] Why are TWRP backups so much bigger than CWM backups?

before i went to 4.2, i was using CWM and each backup usually only took up about ~1 gb of space.
now im using TWRP since it seems to work better with 4.2 and was recommended with 4.2, and backups are almost 2gb each.
i dont have much more than i did before. and this eats up SO MUCH SPACE on the internal SD i can only leave one backup on my phone, whereas i could have 2-3 backups before.
I;m not planning to jump back to cwm because its a huge hassle to to change recoveries. but is there anything i can do to downsize it? or save to my external SD and still have it working?
Ive tried backing up to external sd with bad results before.
Thanks for any help
Did you take the blobs folder in account when looking at the size of the CWM backups? I'm sure I'm over simplifying here, but CWM takes a 'snapshot' of your system on the first backup, and then only backs up things that have changed from then on, even if you delete the first backup. It makes things quicker for sure and since it only backs up changes, the backups are smaller too as they share some data. TWRP does a full backup each time. I use TWRP, but do miss the quick backups that CWM gave me.
lordmorphous said:
Did you take the blobs folder in account when looking at the size of the CWM backups? I'm sure I'm over simplifying here, but CWM takes a 'snapshot' of your system on the first backup, and then only backs up things that have changed from then on, even if you delete the first backup. It makes things quicker for sure and since it only backs up changes, the backups are smaller too as they share some data. TWRP does a full backup each time. I use TWRP, but do miss the quick backups that CWM gave me.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yep, you are correct! That "blobs" folder is an extremely evil and deceiving... Its HUGE. I like TWRP because it backs up everything in one shot, so I can pull back ups off my phone and save them on my computer for "just in case." Can't do that with CWR....
BAM1789 said:
Yep, you are correct! That "blobs" folder is an extremely evil and deceiving... Its HUGE. I like TWRP because it backs up everything in one shot, so I can pull back ups off my phone and save them on my computer for "just in case." Can't do that with CWR....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You have the option of doing a nandroid backup the old way in CWM. You just have to change the backup format and it will backup without the blobs folder. It's how I do it.
Enable compression on TWRP. Takes a bit longer but can usually decrease the size around 30% or so.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using xda premium

Damn you data! Problem with creating a backup.

Hello. As a happy owner of a DHD, I thought that I could try Kitkat, for one day or two, as I use my phone daily and a stable rom is a must.
For now I'm stuck with CM10.1, but I'm looking forward to the new release.
Anyway, I wanted to create a backup and neither CWM 5.8 Touch or TWRP 2.6.3 go past creating a backup of /data.
CWM just says Error: Could not back up image of /data or something like that, and TWRP says Backup Complete and Failed in red, below it.
Any ideas?
No, I don't have too much apps, TWRP says the ones I want to back up are as following:
Boot (4 MB)
Cache (76 MB)
Data (371 MB)
Android Secure (75 MB)
System (343 MB)
Over 10GB of free space on my microsd card (32GB, class 10), so it's not lack of space.
Help, I'd love to check out Kitkat and Ubuntu Touch...
Fix permissions
maltazar1 said:
Hello. As a happy owner of a DHD, I thought that I could try Kitkat, for one day or two, as I use my phone daily and a stable rom is a must.
For now I'm stuck with CM10.1, but I'm looking forward to the new release.
Anyway, I wanted to create a backup and neither CWM 5.8 Touch or TWRP 2.6.3 go past creating a backup of /data.
CWM just says Error: Could not back up image of /data or something like that, and TWRP says Backup Complete and Failed in red, below it.
Any ideas?
No, I don't have too much apps, TWRP says the ones I want to back up are as following:
Boot (4 MB)
Cache (76 MB)
Data (371 MB)
Android Secure (75 MB)
System (343 MB)
Over 10GB of free space on my microsd card (32GB, class 10), so it's not lack of space.
Help, I'd love to check out Kitkat and Ubuntu Touch...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
First fix permissions in TWRP recovery advanced tab.. then try backing up again.. If u can boot use backup software like titanium backup to backup app data and settings... You can restore the settings too..
gkprashu said:
First fix permissions in TWRP recovery advanced tab.. then try backing up again.. If u can boot use backup software like titanium backup to backup app data and settings... You can restore the settings too..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I know about the possibility of using Titanium Backup, don't worry, the thing is that I wanted to see if I can just use the nand backup once, to make everything simpler.
I'll try the permissions and see, thanks for the tip
Edit:
Fixed permissions without problems, didn't work, same thing.

Weird backup-restore TWRP behaviour

I have been using TWRP for a while and have been saving backups regularly on the external SD-card. I have restored many times after testing some custom ROM.
Today I tried to restore my most recent backup and after it was done, it throws me back into the boot screen.
I can see a long list of previous backups but when I select them I observe the following, which I had not paid attention to before:
1) the most recent backup involves the partitions System and Data
2) the three next backups show no partitions and TWRP refuses to restore them (and I could swear I had restored from them in the past)
3) a very old backup shows System, Data and Boot
4) an older custom ROM backup also shows System, Data and Boot
Can someone please tell me what you think the problem is here? I cannot go back to my most recent backup.
Make sure you've not somehow ended up with 2 twrp folders with different id's as twrp will only recognize the current Id.
If that's the case copy the backups into that folder.
There is only one TWRP folder. It seems some backups contain "Boot" "Data" and "System" and some backups contain only "System" and "Data" and are missing "Boot".
As I only followed the "defaults" when I did the backups, I need to understand why in some cases it did not save "Boot".
Would you know why?
Zilliman said:
There is only one TWRP folder. It seems some backups contain "Boot" "Data" and "System" and some backups contain only "System" and "Data" and are missing "Boot".
As I only followed the "defaults" when I did the backups, I need to understand why in some cases it did not save "Boot".
Would you know why?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've no idea, never come across it, unless you accidentally unchecked those partitions?
In any case none are full backups.
You should make a backup of EFS and modem too.
ashyx said:
I've no idea, never come across it, unless you accidentally unchecked those partitions?
In any case none are full backups.
You should make a backup of EFS and modem too.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have managed to restore an older backup which had Boot, Data and System partitions. I then restored the latest backup which only had Data and System. It now seems to work. I started it up and it all appears to be in place.
I then booted into TWRP and selected to do a backup and it had automatically selected the Data, System and Boot partitions. Why did it leave Boot out of the previous backups I do not understand but will keep an eye on it from now on.
Regarding the EFS partition: Originally I installed the stock ROM using ODIN. Does this mean that all the partitions were created during that initial installation? Or was the EFS partition present beforehand?
EFS partition is not part of the firmware, so is extremely important to back up, probably the most important of all to backup as it contains a lot of information that could render your device useless if it gets corrupted.
OK, thanks, will do it now.
ashyx said:
EFS partition is not part of the firmware, so is extremely important to back up, probably the most important of all to backup as it contains a lot of information that could render your device useless if it gets corrupted.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Can we make EFS checked by default? I had no idea that it's that important..
alexeyp said:
Can we make EFS checked by default? I had no idea that it's that important..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
"Important" - is there anything other than the IMEI to worry about? On my other, dual-SIM Chinese phones, I used to change the IMEI as I liked.
Yes. And it's ONLY 20MB, compared to the other partitions which are many GB in length.
And Restore should be made to have the partition unchecked by default.
Zilliman said:
"Important" - is there anything other than the IMEI to worry about? On my other, dual-SIM Chinese phones, I used to change the IMEI as I liked.
Yes. And it's ONLY 20MB, compared to the other partitions which are many GB in length.
And Restore should be made to have the partition unchecked by default.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Check it and it should stay checked.
And yes it contains a lot of important stuff related to imei, wifi, network, Bluetooth.
Lose it and you could be in trouble.
Search Google for more info.

**URGENT** TWRP states NO OS INSTALLED

Hello all-
In the process of trying to upgrade to OOS 5. I made sure to make a backup of the entire system (system image) in TWRP before proceeding. I also backed up the Boot image and Modems. I had the entire OOS 5 rom ready to flash but before doing so I elected t wipe Dalvik/Cache, Cache, Data & System as I always thought you have to do a fresh clean install when changing versions (7.1.1 to 8.0). The first error I encountered was that it couldn't flash the file. Then when I tried to restore my backup...it does the process with no errors yet when I try to reboot I am told no OS installed. What has happened and what can I do since I always make these backups to be safe?
Thanks all!
Plug your phone on a PC (with the phone in recovery mode), move your backup (sdcard/TWRP/backup) on your PC to keep it safe. Next follow the mega unbrick method 2 (just Google it) on OnePlus forum, update your phone to the version that you were and reflash TWRP and copy your backup from your PC to your phone (in the same location than before) and try to restore your backup.
Error installing OOS 5
Thanks all! I thought a System Image backup was all I needed and had no idea I also had to restore my Boot Image backup. Once I restored that backup I was good to go. Oddly though I didn't have all my apps and data on the phone like I thought the system image backup would have. Honestly I don't care as long as I have a phone again.
On a side note, I have the full OOS 5 ROM on my phone and when I try to flash it I receive an error. The error message states as if the file os for a One Plus 3 and that it cant confirm what my device is? I have always downloaded the full ROMS from OP site and nver had issues upgrading in the past. Any ideas? Does the version of my TWRP matter? Please advise.
DroidJay123 said:
Thanks all! I thought a System Image backup was all I needed and had no idea I also had to restore my Boot Image backup. Once I restored that backup I was good to go. Oddly though I didn't have all my apps and data on the phone like I thought the system image backup would have. Honestly I don't care as long as I have a phone again.
On a side note, I have the full OOS 5 ROM on my phone and when I try to flash it I receive an error. The error message states as if the file os for a One Plus 3 and that it cant confirm what my device is? I have always downloaded the full ROMS from OP site and nver had issues upgrading in the past. Any ideas? Does the version of my TWRP matter? Please advise.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
System image is rarely useful, it's a full Byte by Byte backup of the system partition ( meaning even the empty Bytes are saved). System partition means that boot one isn't concerned. And system partition means that data partition isn't concerned either, so no user apps or data.
Better to stick to /boot /system and /data backup.
You must have latest official TWRP 3.2 for Oreo ROMs. Or blue_spark latest (8.61 version see blue_spark kernel thread OP)
Striatum_bdr said:
System image is rarely useful, it's a full Byte by Byte backup of the system partition ( meaning even the empty Bytes are saved). System partition means that boot one isn't concerned. And system partition means that data partition isn't concerned either, so no user apps or data.
Better to stick to /boot /system and /data backup.
You must have latest official TWRP 3.2 for Oreo ROMs. Or blue_spark latest (8.61 version see blue_spark kernel thread OP)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks man! Good information to have moving forward. No sense in backing up partitions that are not useful and only take up space. Can I update to TWRP 3.2 right in the TWRP app or should I download image and flash within TWRP? I am currently on SU 2.82....is that compatible with Android O?
DroidJay123 said:
Thanks man! Good information to have moving forward. No sense in backing up partitions that are not useful and only take up space. Can I update to TWRP 3.2 right in the TWRP app or should I download image and flash within TWRP? I am currently on SU 2.82....is that compatible with Android O?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes update from within TWRP. I think superSu 2.85 should be good or Magisk 14.0

Categories

Resources