Low level data recovery - Nexus 5X Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Dear forum users,
today I'm trying to recover some data on my neighbour's phone. His Nexus 5X went into random crashing and bootloops.
As my LG G2 recently failed with no warning and no backup, I bought a emmc reader. It works well, and I managed to also recover data from a dead Zenfone 2.
But today I'm facing a different challenge. I can see his userdata volume, but filesystem is not reconized. (from what I've read, it should be ext4).
My neighbour says he never run encryption on his phone.
So far, I've managed to make a raw image of his userdata volume.
LinusReader and Active Partition Recovery (I'm running win 10) doesn't show a filesystem info on this volume.
Does anyone knows how am I supposed to mount this volume to rewordrecover some files ?
Best regards,
dFx

By default the drive is encrypted, but with a default password of "default_password".
See https://source.android.com/security/encryption/full-disk.html

As the disk is encrypted, I must find the encryption key.
But I'm not familiar with java nor C, and I can't find where the key is stored.
Btw, decrypting this full drive feels way out of my reach :S
Or is there eventually a software that would take my key and decrypt my raw 10Gb bytes of encrypted data ?

Related

[Q] Need help with internal memory partition structure on Incredible

I have an Incredible, rooted (and I have issues)... I appear to have repartitioned my internal memory area. Thankfully, the phone is useable, but it's not quite right as some programs don't work properly, the video recorder hangs hard, and I have either corrupt data or areas stomped on by other areas due to incorrect partition information. If certain files get touched, then the phone immediately protects itself by flagging the internal memory as read only. I did find a workaround to the phone automatically going into ReadOnly at boot by simply adding a ".nomedia" file in the root of MP3 (where some corrupt files happen to reside). As long as the system doesn't touch the files, the file system remains R/W.
I stupidly did this to myeself. I did it while using a Partitioning tool (specifically Acronis, making a "secure zone") on my PC while my incredible was charging in the USB port and I accidentally used the wrong drive. It was one of those "oh crap" moments. If I connect the phone to my PC, the internal drive comes up as being unformatted and windows asks if I want to format. Another disk utility (EASEUS) sees the drive, can show how its partitioned, and I can explore within the partitions to see that files exist.
I've been searching for a long while to find someone somewhere who might have info on how to fix the Internal SD partition information, but have yet to find anything. Reflashing the factory ROM, "factory reset", etc. appear to just repopulate the already partitioned areas. The closest thing I have found to my problem is a post called "Challenge to members... Help me fix internal partitions without recovery" on the Incredibleforums elsewhere (can't post external links yet). Unfortunately, trying those solutions doesn't fix the issue. That post deals with /dev/mount/mmcblk0p1 and /dev/mount/mmcblk0p2. My issue appears to be in /dev/mount/mmcblk0p3. Parted doesn't like that one much. I have attached a couple of files that show parted output for all of the drives that get mounted, per /etc/fstab & /etc/recovery.fstab. This was done in ADB while the phone was booted into recovery.
If anyone can point me in the right direction how to properly (and safely) repartition the *internal* areas back to how they should be, I'd really appreciate the help!
Thanks,
Blue
I ran across this:
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=15746
.... hope it helps send you in the right direction anyway. Good luck!
Formating instructions i think it would be a better idea to try using the ruu.exe tool to reflash your phone and it should format that partition back and put all the old apps it came with back in proper order. Since the phone is use able right now you could also try a factory reset first if you don't want to try the ruu.exe.
Thanks for the link and tip for RUU.
sfdisk does not appear to be a useable command on my DInc. Is there an Android version/port? Also, that link suggests that the partition should be msdos, but isn't the boot sector type supposed to be ext2/3 or yaffs2 (?) on the DInc?
I have already tried the factory reset as well as reformatting the phone areas using CWM Recovery (3.0.0.8). I also reflashed a factory stock ROM found in the lastest RUU. I also flashed the 2nd to latest ROM from that RUU (2.1). All of these only reformatted and re-installed stock ROM. Unfortunately, doing so only reformats the existing partitions, but does not fix the screwed up partition sizing. As far as I can determine, setting my phone back to S-ON and running the RUU will do nothing different than what I did by placing the stock PB31IMG.zip in the root of my (external) SD card and flashing it from HBOOT.
If the RUU truly repartitions the internal memory, then I'm game to set S-ON and try that. However, all indications are that doing so will be no different than flashing PB31IMG.zip. Is that correct?
Thanks again,
Blue

could not mount /data and "unable to find crypto footer

Hello.
I attempted to flash the Open Beta 7 (OTA_011) zip with TWRP to my OnePlus 3 and it broke everything.
The flash went normally, like with previous updates, but this time, I couldn't flash SuperSU over it. So I rebooted, hoping it worked.
I was presented by a "Decryption failed" screen, with the only option to factory reset.
The problem is, that I don't have any backups of my data, because FolderSyncLite aparently doesn't work at all.
When I got back into TWRP, my /data partition wasn't mounted, with the error
Code:
could not mount /data and unable to find crypto footer
TWRD shows the Data partition as 0MB. I know the data couldn't have just disappeared.
My best guess is that the userdata partition got corrupted somehow, and because it was encrypted, the entire partition is now useless.
TWRP's fsck.f2fs fails with error 255 (glitched error -1?), probably because it's encrypted.
Is there anything I can do to recover my data? Could I copy the raw partition to my computer and process it there?
Could I manually rebuild the broken header/footer? I still know the pattern/PIN and I don't think they're not salted.
I know there's some brilliant people on here. Please help.
Use the mega unbrick guide and everything will be fine
Edit: i didn't read that you're want to recover your data ... Hmm probably you can't recover your data anymore because your partition is currupted.
Look, change the data partition to ext4. It should work because sometimes the partition gets formatted to a corrupted form of f2fs. If it doesn't work, just wipe userdata and try again. It sure should work. Don't be shocked. Happens.
Thanks for the replies.
I tried a few more things, but the partition was beyond help. Full-disk encryption isn't very fault-tolerant.
I'll be using two sync programs from now on, just in case.
franga2000 said:
Thanks for the replies.
I tried a few more things, but the partition was beyond help. Full-disk encryption isn't very fault-tolerant.
I'll be using two sync programs from now on, just in case.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have the same problem. The unbrick guide didn't help. Any ideas anyone?. Please help

Device takes 30GB with nothing installed after decryption

How do I fix this i decrypted it and now this what do I have to do?
Solution
[/IHi! So are you saying it is mandatory to "unencrypt" (hence format int. storage) in order to be able to install this ROM?
not to flash ROM. You can flash it while encrypted. But it will ask you for a password on first boot. And after that you are ****** because you will lose access to the internal storage, rendering the recovery useless at this moment... however you will still have access to the phone via bootloader. After that, the only way to decrypt will be via fastboot command "fastboot format userdata" (in which you lose all your data).
From my understanding, because of this command you may experience issues with your partition. At least I had a problem: my internal storage was "cut" in half on windows when I connected phone and checked and after booting first time finally thinking everything was solved disk info also reported that I had some 30gb used, with about high 20's gbs free. I was like wtf.
However, luckily, after formatting internal storage via fastboot command you gain access back to your storage, as the encryption (which was blocking you) is gone. This way you can format (yes, again) your storage through recovery (format, not wipe). It corrects the partition and your phone is read as having 64gb of storage again.
Bottomline, as I understand, had I been decrypted from the start ( which means, before flashing the DU ROM) I wouldn't have had any problems at all with booting ROM first time after installing it and gapps, because it wouldn't ask me for a password. So I wouldn't have to fastboot command to format storage, and wouldn't have problems with partition requiring a new format (this time through recovery).
tip: don't forget to check my comments in the previous page. And I advise you to unencrypt before flashing this ROM. There are tutorials on youtube and xda developers forum certainly. Maybe even here. Good luck every one. And I sincerely only recommend rooting your phone and flashing custom roms if you get the basics of a few commands at least on fastboot and know how to backup your stuff before in case something goes very wrong and your recovery goes to ****
edit: you can decrypt and not lose your data if you backup, move backup to pc, and then, after decrypting, move everything back to your phone.
*

Corrupted SD-card after configuring it as internal storage on lineage 18.1

Hello dear community,
I would like to ask whether anyone knows how to restore data that became corrupted from configuring an SD-card as internal to move data from the internal storage of the phone to the sd-card.
I can see that the data still is there but cannot access it. For example .epubs or .jpgs cannot be accessed anymore. When trying to open .jpg I get: "Error interpreting JPEG image file (Not a JPEG file: starts with 0x05 0x75)".
Would be glad to find a solution to restore valueable data.

Lost internal storage after dirty flash of ROM update

I think I have just screwed up big time.
Here is what happened:
Had CrDroid 8 installed (Android 12) with encrypted storage
Wanted to upgrade to next version; following the guide, simply did a wipe (without any advanced options) in TWRP and then installed the zip
Realized after rebooting that the phone has been completely reset and internal storage shows as empty
I know that this is related to a problem with decryption by TWRP with A12.
My question is, is there any chance that I would be able to recover my lost files? I mean where did they go? What could have happened? Did TWRP just not understand the encrypted data so it threw it away and recreated it, overwriting these files?
Is there any chance that the previous data partition (my internal storage, all my photos, etc) are still somewhere to be found within the storage and I could locate this partition and decrypt it using my passphrase? I am desperate at this point. I am stupid and did not make backups. I thought this would be a regular upgrade, wipe, install ZIP, like I've done dozens of times... Couldn't I perhaps scan the raw disk devices for some magic string or anything that would mark the start of the encrypted partition?
Sorry about the frantic writing, I am devastated and literally begging for any kind of help with this. Thank you.
Sorry for the noise, I was desperate I gave up since then, I just don't think this is possible. As far as I understand the encrpytion keys have been flushed (which are kept in the TEE anyway?). I still don't fully understand why TWRP just decides to wipe /data/media as well as /data in this case, but what is done is done. Back up your data guys. Same old story.

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