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Can I Backup and Recover Failing Samsung S4?

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persistentone

Well-Known Member
I have a failing Samsung S4 that I can power on up to the red Verizon logo. At that point, it hangs. Is there any way for me to get the phone to a menu or state where I can backup application data? The best result would be for me to reboot the phone so that I could enter individual applications and do backups of data.

At this point, I am thinking that hanging at the red Verizon logo might indicate that the OS itself has become corrupted. Can anyone think of an alternate reason for the hang?

I am able to press the Volume Up button and then power on and this gets me to an OS replacement menu. I have no idea whether this would give me any options to get into a mode where I can backup data. When I press Volume Down it does a normal boot and hangs at the red Verizon screen. When I do a Volume Up it wants to go into an OS overwrite mode, but there is nothing connected to the phone so that operation appears to be impossible in this state.

Online I read about getting to a recovery mode by pressing Volume Up + Home + Power. I am probably doing the sequence incorrectly, but all that happens in this mode is the phone vibrates every few seconds. It loops doing that. I am not sure that the recovery menu has any backup option anyway.

Assuming the OS is corrupt, is there any way for me to replace the OS with a new copy without wiping data and preserving all of my app installations? The phone is an I545, locked to Verizon most likely.
 
persistentone said:
I have a failing Samsung S4 that I can power on up to the red Verizon logo. At that point, it hangs. Is there any way for me to get the phone to a menu or state where I can backup application data? The best result would be for me to reboot the phone so that I could enter individual applications and do backups of data.

At this point, I am thinking that hanging at the red Verizon logo might indicate that the OS itself has become corrupted. Can anyone think of an alternate reason for the hang?

I am able to press the Volume Up button and then power on and this gets me to an OS replacement menu. I have no idea whether this would give me any options to get into a mode where I can backup data. When I press Volume Down it does a normal boot and hangs at the red Verizon screen. When I do a Volume Up it wants to go into an OS overwrite mode, but there is nothing connected to the phone so that operation appears to be impossible in this state.

Online I read about getting to a recovery mode by pressing Volume Up + Home + Power. I am probably doing the sequence incorrectly, but all that happens in this mode is the phone vibrates every few seconds. It loops doing that. I am not sure that the recovery menu has any backup option anyway.

Assuming the OS is corrupt, is there any way for me to replace the OS with a new copy without wiping data and preserving all of my app installations? The phone is an I545, locked to Verizon most likely.
Click to expand...
Yeah it is volume down+ power button usually to see the green android, and then after you see just push to recovery mode, and then hit volume up a few times and you will be in your system recovery :)
 
Milo Williamson said:
Yeah it is volume down+ power button usually to see the green android, and then after you see just push to recovery mode, and then hit volume up a few times and you will be in your system recovery :)
Click to expand...

Maybe newer versions of Android are different but on my phone Volume Down + Power gets you to a menu where there are only two choices, and neither of those is a recovery mode.

Volume Up is to replace the OS. Volume Down is to boot at normal. No recovery mode.

Volume Up + Home + Power is supposed to get you to recovery mode. I am still trying to figure out how to do that on my phone. But even in recovery mode, what can I do? The only real option is to wipe the cache.
 
I got into Recovery Mode, finally. I wiped the cache partition and rebooted. Same result. I hang on the red Verizon screen. What can I try next?

These phones have no recovery mode that allows a backup and restore? That's surprising! I see that even "Safe Mode" is not an option in Recovery Mode, and the way that you go into Safe Mode requires you to be able to go through a full boot process.
 
persistentone said:
I got into Recovery Mode, finally. I wiped the cache partition and rebooted. Same result. I hang on the red Verizon screen. What can I try next?

These phones have no recovery mode that allows a backup and restore? That's surprising! I see that even "Safe Mode" is not an option in Recovery Mode, and the way that you go into Safe Mode requires you to be able to go through a full boot process.
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Safe mode on my tablet and cell, press and hold the power button and it will pop up :)
 
Milo Williamson said:
Safe mode on my tablet and cell, press and hold the power button and it will pop up :)
Click to expand...

On my Samsung S4, when I press Power and leave it depressed, the Samsung logo comes up and then a black screen. As soon as I let go of power, it resets and I get the Samsung logo again and it goes through normal bootup. That hangs at the red Verizon logo.
 
persistentone said:
On my Samsung S4, when I press Power and leave it depressed, the Samsung logo comes up and then a black screen. As soon as I let go of power, it resets and I get the Samsung logo again and it goes through normal bootup. That hangs at the red Verizon logo.
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Sooo when you do that huh that is funny.. What did I type up?
 
persistentone said:
These phones have no recovery mode that allows a backup and restore? That's surprising! I see that even "Safe Mode" is not an option in Recovery Mode, and the way that you go into Safe Mode requires you to be able to go through a full boot process.
Click to expand...
No stock recovery mode includes a backup. You need a custom recovery for that, and that's not an option with the phone in this state. The stock recovery module is for installing official software and for performing factory resets, nothing much else.

And yes, "safe mode" is "normal android with user-installed apps disabled", so by definition it has to boot into Android.

The problem here is that either you have some corrupt data that stops the phone booting, in which case a reset if your only option (which you don't want), or the system software itself has become corrupted. In the latter case reflashing might fix it (unless the corruption is due to a hardware failure), but I'm not familiar enough with Samsung to know whether that will reset the device in the process (with the HTCs I was using at the time of the s4 an official firmware flash very much did erase the device, but it may be that there is a way of doing this with an s4 that doesn't do that - I don't know the answer).
 
Hadron said:
No stock recovery mode includes a backup. You need a custom recovery for that, and that's not an option with the phone in this state. The stock recovery module is for installing official software and for performing factory resets, nothing much else.
Click to expand...

Okay, but it says something about Google that they do not believe "recovery" involves backups or restores from a separate file system. Even if you are backing up an encrypted file system, the backup and restore procedures could prompt you for your PIN.

The problem here is that either you have some corrupt data that stops the phone booting, in which case a reset if your only option (which you don't want), or the system software itself has become corrupted. In the latter case reflashing might fix it (unless the corruption is due to a hardware failure), but I'm not familiar enough with Samsung to know whether that will reset the device in the process (with the HTCs I was using at the time of the s4 an official firmware flash very much did erase the device, but it may be that there is a way of doing this with an s4 that doesn't do that - I don't know the answer).
Click to expand...

You summarized my situation well, and I am increasingly realizing that sorting through these issues - if I move cautiously - is going to take months, not days, given my lack of experience. So I should just get a new phone and start from scratch, and I can attempt a recovery as a background project. I am hoping that in the next few weeks someone will see my post and put up some definitive information on whether I can reflash the current OS without losing installed apps and data.
 
persistentone said:
Okay, but it says something about Google that they do not believe "recovery" involves backups or restores from a separate file system. Even if you are backing up an encrypted file system, the backup and restore procedures could prompt you for your PIN.
Click to expand...
Yeah, it's very much a "recover the device" rather than a "recover the data" solution. But that's all it's ever been. It would make sense if you also had a backup, but comprehensive data backups have never been a feature of Android. I've always thought that this is because Google's focus is on Google's cloud services and they aren't much interested in how people might use their devices otherwise (Apple always had the option of a comprehensive backup because their starting point was the iPod, which was basically an accessory for carrying around content synched from a computer, with their cloud stuff coming later).
 
persistentone said:
I got into Recovery Mode, finally. I wiped the cache partition and rebooted. Same result. I hang on the red Verizon screen. What can I try next?
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The only other option that you really can try is to reflash the device's firmware (no, this won't wipe it - if you do it correctly)
 
"Permanently deleted" is the key phrase there.

While there are forensic recovery services available, they are very costly and data recovery is not guaranteed. The more the data was overwritten, the less likely the recovery. Good luck.
 
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