Root Exchanging nandroids

[brizey]

Does it work? Can I take someone else's TB nandroid and flash it on my phone?

(Might be something on XDA, but XDA's search function blows.)

Just curious. Might be handy if your phone needs to be replaced.

Also might be a security issue if someone swiped your SD card and copied it since your google login, etc. is in the nandroid.

Isn't that kind of what ROM zips are? A nandroid of a system that has not been set up yet?

 

[Yeahha]

Given the recovery is compatible then you could restore it. If you are using CWM and I sent you one of my TWRP nandroids I don't think you would be able to restore it unless you flashed TWRP.

Rom zips aren't nandroids. A rom zip is all the /system and /data files required to install the OS and update scripts to tell the recovery where to place each file. A nandroid is an image of the phone at the point the nandroid was made. You can easily look around a rom zip and take it apart to theme apk files, I think you would need a yaffs explorer of some type to pick around with a nandroid at least for CWM

 

[brizey]

All the more reason to have a lockscreen pin or pattern then. (I always have one--I use my phone at the gym and I have a fear of leaving on an elliptical and having it evaporate.)

 

[Yeahha]

I added more to my response to answer the second part of your question because I failed to read your entire post prior to replying

 

[brizey]

Yeah, I kind of knew that. the ROMS have xml files (or similar), etc. that tell which directories to install and with what permissions, etc, so it is really a build script, not a true image. Hmmmm. Wonder if an image would work better? I know PC manufacturers use build scripts because they compress better so it takes less time to burn the drives at the factory, but that is not really a limitation here. Given that the hardware is identical, shouldn't everyone's /system partition be identical at the beginning? If so, why not just flash an image? Just musing.

 

[Yeahha]

The nandroid files are much bigger, take a look at a rom and the backup for that rom (create the backup right after the flash) it also takes longer to flash a nandroid. Not to mention if you are releasing a rom the zip with the install script will work with any of the current recoveries, if you wanted to release nandroids you would need to create at least 1 for TWRP, 2 for CWM, and perhaps 1 of Amon Ra. Hosting costs money. And to restore a nandroid there is a MD5 verification check so if someone renames the file for some reason it wouldn't be able to be flashed, roms aren't that picky I can rename a rom anything I want and it will flash the same, given I don't change the extention.

The script is usually just text, I think most rom scripts just have the recovery place the directories within the zip in the right place on the phone. There is usually a binary as well, you can check it out yourself open a rom zip and navigate to the /META-INF/com/google/android directory