Root [Verizon] Unable to Create Nandroid with CWM

[Zoandroid]

Between this forum and XDA, I've been told the following two things while looking into my options after rooting my S3.

The S3 does not support CWM Touch Recovery

To make a reliable nandroid, don't try to do it from ROM Mgr. - reboot CWM Recovery and make it manually. Apparently there can be problems with trying to restore an S3 nandroid you had made using ROM Mgr. Note that current version CWM Recovery nandroids will have a screwed up 1970 date stamp in the file name. This is a known issue and no current fix. But you can rename the nandroid, just don't use any spaces or weird characters in the new name.

 

[Rolo42]

The S3 does support CWM touch; I've run it. CWM touch does not support kexec/custom kernels.

 

[Zoandroid]

Aha. Well I believe I may have been told not to use it over on XDA, and those good folks probably had the intention of preventing problems down the road if I wanted to try different ROMs. I like the touch version on my tablet, but really the non-touch version works just fine for me on the S3.

I liked the ability to name the nandroids right from ROM Mgr. as I created them when I tried doing that, but it proved to create possibly unstable nandroids that didn't always restore when needed, so I was advised to just keep making them 'the hard way' from CWM Recovery. Doing so has caused me no problems. I just rename them after I reboot the S3.

 

[Rolo42]

I had problems with ROM Manager on the S3. TWRP has a keyboard in its recovery so you can name your backups.

 

[Zoandroid]

I am not familiar with TWRP.

I found them easily enough with Google. Now for the big question. When it says it saves nandroids "to the sd card", does it mean the REAL EXTERNAL SD card, or is it going to get duped into using the internal memory NAMED "sd card" like CWM does. If it actually goes where I tell it, to the real SD card, I think it looks worth checking into.

 

[Rolo42]

I am not familiar with TWRP.

I found them easily enough with Google. Now for the big question. When it says it saves nandroids "to the sd card", does it mean the REAL EXTERNAL SD card, or is it going to get duped into using the internal memory NAMED "sd card" like CWM does. If it actually goes where I tell it, to the real SD card, I think it looks worth checking into.

TWRP has radio buttons for internal and external SD cards and they work perfectly (I use external).
And it has compression (IIRC, CWM doesn't).

 

[nateap87]

I just made a nandroid back up. Does it automatically save to my SD card? Also said that sd ext not found or something like that but overall went through.

 

[Rolo42]

I just made a nandroid back up. Does it automatically save to my SD card? Also said that sd ext not found or something like that but overall went through.

Then it went to the internal SD card.

 

[nateap87]

Then it went to the internal SD card.

well that's not good. i want everything to go to the ext sd card. what happens if i want to wipe my phone when i finally decide to load a custom rom? will it wipe that partition of the internally memory?

 

[Rolo42]

I interpreted "external SD card not found" as your not having installed one.


If you used TWRP, there are radio buttons to choose between internal and external storage. Did you select external?

Did you browse both cards? (either through TWRP or a file explorer)

In TWRP, hit Advanced|File Manager. Browse to /external_sdcard/TWRP/BACKUPS/<deviceID>; your backups are there if you set it to external storage.

If you used CWM, CWMfanant--er Metfanant could probably help.

 

[nateap87]

I used cwm since I was told it was kexec compatible.

 

[Metfanant]

would you believe in all the years of modding Android's ive never used, or needed to use a Nandroid backup? lol

nate...which version of CWM are you using?

 

[nateap87]

6.0.1.0. And that's hard to believe but impressive.

 

[Zoandroid]

Indeed. I just had to use the nandroid I made last Saturday night because PimlicalA borked my S3's calendar. Seems it has some kind of bug where it corrupts the world timezone file, and shifts all my scheduled alarms by one hour.

@ Rolo42 - I think what he saw says "ext-SD not found" which I have always seen when making a CWM nandroid ever since the Froyo upgrade, when we no longer needed an EXT partition on the SD card for moving apps. I always assumed that is what it said it isn't finding, because there is an option to format the EXT partition from CWM (if you use one). To the best of my knowledge, CWM Recovery only sees mnt/sdcard. It does not see the REAL external SD card. This is one of my beefs with this whole "internal SD Card" nonsense. If they had not labelled the internal Phone storage "SD Card" then maybe these apps like CWM would still see the REAL one.

Maybe what I should be looking for is someone to write a utility that renames the internal memory to something that doesn't make apps think it is an SD card. Before all this nonsense started, apps all FOUND the real SD card without any problem. Now they don't, unless they have an option for the user to point them to it. Just another case of programmers trying to fix what ain't broken.

 

[Rolo42]

There are apps that install to the sdcard by default (or even required); perhaps they called the internal one that for compatibility...

TWRP doesn't have a problem, so CWM devs need to step up!

NANDroid backups came in handy for me on a few occasions. I have to have a current bare-metal restore handy at all times.

 

[Zoandroid]

Speaking of stepping up, I don't see why CWM's problem with making the file name date stamp totally borked back to 1970 was not immediately fixed. But I would always prefer the ability to name the nandroid myself as it is being created. From what I read, TWRP has this very same issue with the 1970 date problem.

 

[Metfanant]

NANDroid backups came in handy for me on a few occasions. I have to have a current bare-metal restore handy at all times.

my bare metal restore is an ODIN file

 

[Zoandroid]

my bare metal restore is an ODIN file

The problem that I see there is if your phone pukes, you need a PC to fix it. A nandroid restore can happen within the phone itself. That's why I like 'em.

 

[Metfanant]

The problem that I see there is if your phone pukes, you need a PC to fix it. A nandroid restore can happen within the phone itself. That's why I like 'em.

i make it a habit of not doing anything that could cause my phone nausea when im not near a computer

 

[Zoandroid]

i make it a habit of not doing anything that could cause my phone nausea when im not near a computer

That's a nice thing to shoot for, if you can get away with it. I suppose it depends a lot on what you do all day and how much you rely on your phone. I know many who would not have that as an option.

 

[Metfanant]

That's a nice thing to shoot for, if you can get away with it. I suppose it depends a lot on what you do all day and how much you rely on your phone. I know many who would not have that as an option.

ridiculous...if you rely on your phone then it is even MORE important to always do flashes and mods near a computer...

rushing around and crack flashing while your at work, or on a family vacation is what causes a lot of panic threads...the world will not end because you wait to flash the latest CM nightly until you get home from work

 

[Zoandroid]

ridiculous...if you rely on your phone then it is even MORE important to always do flashes and mods near a computer...

rushing around and crack flashing while your at work, or on a family vacation is what causes a lot of panic threads...the world will not end because you wait to flash the latest CM nightly until you get home from work

I should explain something, because you did say that you avoid DOING something "that could cause my phone nausea when I'm not near a computer". So you are making the statement that, apparently, you have never had a phone simply bork ITSELF, without flashing ROMS or any of that sort of thing, simply while using the phone the same way you have been using it for days/weeks/months on end.

I am not talking about deliberate actions like flashing ROMS ending in bad results. Normally, I flash a ROM and stick with it for a long time, and I have never gotten into nightly ROM releases.

The sudden failures I have dealt with on several devices were either caused by an SD card suddenly becoming "format not recognized" or some app suddenly deciding to take down something all-important to me, such as my calendar (the reason I have a smartphone to begin with). I agree that flashing ROMs and such should only be done with the proper tools nearby just in case. But this last time I had to restore a nandroid was the result of simply OPENING my calendar app. I got up, opened the calendar, and was greeted with the accursed error, and all my alarms for the day were shifted one hour later. It seems to be a bug in the program, because it has happened three times since I got the S3. Never happened at all before on my previous Android phones running the same program. When weird crap like that jumps up, I find it is quickest to just restore a nandroid back to a time before the issue occurred, rather than spend precious hours trying to wild guess what went wrong. That's why I make weekly nandroids. And if I happen to be away from home when it goes sideways, I keep the last couple nandroids on my SD card just in case, so I can restore one and go on with my day.

 

[Metfanant]

I should explain something, because you did say that you avoid DOING something "that could cause my phone nausea when I'm not near a computer". So you are making the statement that, apparently, you have never had a phone simply bork ITSELF, without flashing ROMS or any of that sort of thing, simply while using the phone the same way you have been using it for days/weeks/months on end.

I am not talking about deliberate actions like flashing ROMS ending in bad results. Normally, I flash a ROM and stick with it for a long time, and I have never gotten into nightly ROM releases.

The sudden failures I have dealt with on several devices were either caused by an SD card suddenly becoming "format not recognized" or some app suddenly deciding to take down something all-important to me, such as my calendar (the reason I have a smartphone to begin with). I agree that flashing ROMs and such should only be done with the proper tools nearby just in case. But this last time I had to restore a nandroid was the result of simply OPENING my calendar app. I got up, opened the calendar, and was greeted with the accursed error, and all my alarms for the day were shifted one hour later. It seems to be a bug in the program, because it has happened three times since I got the S3. Never happened at all before on my previous Android phones running the same program. When weird crap like that jumps up, I find it is quickest to just restore a nandroid back to a time before the issue occurred, rather than spend precious hours trying to wild guess what went wrong. That's why I make weekly nandroids. And if I happen to be away from home when it goes sideways, I keep the last couple nandroids on my SD card just in case, so I can restore one and go on with my day.

thats a different situation then what i was talking about...and you're right ive never had something just happen that either clearing the data of an app or a quick factory reset hasn't be able to fix...ive become so efficient at restoring my device it probably takes me 10 minutes

 

[Rolo42]

From what I read, TWRP has this very same issue with the 1970 date problem.

I think it does, not sure; I use the built-in keyboard to name my backups.

my bare metal restore is an ODIN file

That's not a restore, that's a rebuild.

If something were to go wrong (it happens, even without asking for trouble), I want to be able to restore on the spot--especially since Mr. Murphy will ensure something will go wrong when I'm 50 miles from a computer and need Google Maps to get to one.