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Root [Verizon] 100% backed up?

sorry if its going off topic but i mentioned above that all he needs is titanium backup and my point was if he has rooted the phone the knox counter should be tripped and therefore he should have no issue with installing a custom recovery and taking a backup with nandroid.

edit

ok the process he mentioned "towelroot" does root the phone but does not trip the knox counter.
 
RBEmerson said:
Ooooohhh - home + down was near death on a stick. It dropped me into safe mode without any hint of a prompt, warning, or "GOTCHA!!" notice in advance. Rebooting cleared it but I still had to restore some settings afterward. Forget that idea.

I'll try the idea of investigating the stock ROM. To save me some searching, do you have a link for it?

I did the simple towelroot process. It worked on the S5 and also a 2014 Nexus 7 WiFi (AFAIK, knox counter-free).
Click to expand...

stock rom depends on your country but all can be found here

Firmwares | SamMobile
 
silentwitness said:
sorry if its going off topic but i mentioned above that all he needs is titanium backup and my point was if he has rooted the phone the knox counter should be tripped and therefore he should have no issue with installing a custom recovery and taking a backup with nandroid.
Click to expand...

That's not true, actually. The knox counter is tripped when something is written to the device in download/fastboot mode. There are exploits that do not need to boot to an insecure kernel to install and achieve root. Towelroot is one of them.

Root is therefore possible in an S5 without tripping the knox counter. As long as the OP keeps the stock ROM and Stock recovery, he should be fine.
 
thanks learnt something new didnt know you could root without tripping the counter. I dont actually have my phone in hand yet and cause of the knox counter i purchased the phone in USA while i stay in india thinking that my warranty would be void the min i root so no point in taking it from here.
 
Just a word of caution, though. With root, there is no guarantee that it won't trip the counter. Just that it shouldn't. Proceed at your own risk.
 
lunatic59 said:
Just a word of caution, though. With root, there is no guarantee that it won't trip the counter. Just that it shouldn't. Proceed at your own risk.
Click to expand...

Strictly speaking, that's true of any hack or crack: the Law of Unintended Consequences is not easily denied. :p
 
Another backup option that I don't believe I have ever seen mentioned on a forum, and I found it just digging around one day..........the app ES File Explorer has a tool in its menus called "app manager". If you long tap on one of the listed apps, it gets selected with a checkmark. Then, you can "select all" in the header menu. Then at the bottom a "Backup" button appears. What it does is copy every apk you have to a folder on the internal storage named backups/apps. Then copy the folder to your external SD card, and you'll have every app on the phone backed up for later installation if needed.

I have not yet found a way to tell ES File Explorer to back them up directly to the external SD card.
 
None of which resolves the issue of the SD being well over 50% full. Which makes a full backup a real challenge.
 
The S5 supports up to 128GB microSD cards. ;)

If you do decide to make a "full backup" (a.k.a nandroid) using Safestrap, be advised: Traditionally through several Android phones and tablets my nandroid backups average around 1GB in size. For some reason unknown to me, the nandroid I made with Safestrap on the VZW S5 of just the stock ROM and its apps is over 4GB! No idea why. But you'll definitely need some space on an SD card, especially if you want more than one copy ( a nandroid also restores all your settings, app data, everything. It is very much like Drive Image used to be for a Windows PC. You get back everything configured just the way it was when you make the nandroid). You might want one copy that is just stock the way the phone came to you, and another with all the added apps and settings you changed. It's up to you.
 
True dat. But... I really, really, really want to back up the existing 64G SD and restore it to a 128G SD (instead of doing a verified copy). It's that or use something like Acronis, on a PC, to back up the 64G SD and restore it to the 128G SD. For this job, I trust TI more than Acronis. But I'm up against the wall with the 64G SD not having enough room to hold its contents and a back up image.
 
RBEmerson said:
True dat. But... I really, really, really want to back up the existing 64G SD and restore it to a 128G SD (instead of doing a verified copy). It's that or use something like Acronis, on a PC, to back up the 64G SD and restore it to the 128G SD. For this job, I trust TI more than Acronis. But I'm up against the wall with the 64G SD not having enough room to hold its contents and a back up image.
Click to expand...

So shut down the phone, pull the SD card, and do the backup/copy operation on your computer. Then put the new 128GB card into the phone and power it on. I don't understand why you feel you need 'backup software' on the PC to do this. Just copy the files from one drive to another. :) Most backup software employs some kind of proprietary compression, meaning you MUST have the software to access the backup and make any use of the files. That's why I don't use it. I just back up the files themselves. And for off computer safe-keeping, Bluray disc media is cheap. ;)

The other advantage to doing this on the PC is that it would take a long time to push 64GB through a USB cable from the phone to the computer, compared to between an SD card reader and a hard drive.
 
RBEmerson said:
Once again...


The knox discussion is interesting but it's topic drift (as if I never did that in a thread... riiiiiight). I really, really, really want to nail down the question above.
Click to expand...

@RBEmerson, I've read the whole thread on this and have the same exact (well almost) situation you have and looking for the answer. Im towelrooted and have Titanium backup installed. The other day I inadvertently erased my S5 (put the case on upside down in a dark room and mustve hit the wrong keys combo, yup a real dunce cap move). Anyway I restored the system apps and data from the recent Titanium backup and i'd say got about 90% back. Was missing pictures and wallpaper was back to stock. I'm really not sure if theres any way to have an exact image of the phone with just Titanium backup. Thats what I'm looking for, an exact image to restore but without all this custom ROM stuff. Did you ever find an answer??

Thanks much,
NS.
 
Titanium backup only backs up apps, system apps and user apps... for backing up your phone itself it's worthless, you can't count on it it to save your phone because it won't!
what you want is clockworkmod (CWM), Philz recovery or TWRP... Me personally I use Philz recovery I think it's the best one out right now. These three programs (all you need is one) will make a complete backup image of your phone so you can restore your phone exactly to the point of how it is right now

Now I see that you used towelroot, I'm supposing you did this to avoid tripping the Knox warranty? By using one of these recovery methods you WILL trip Knox warranty, it's unavoidable (at this point in time) if you wanna make a full backup recovery of your phone

If you're with Boost (or SM- G900P) I can guide you to the right spot :)
http://androidforums.com/showthread.php?t=850449


Good luck
 
Thanks so much for the quick reply. Yes I'm concerned about the whole warranty thing especially since Im new to Android in general. Still learning all the lingo and terms and don't feel entirely comfortable going that route just yet.
 
NSDroid said:
@RBEmerson, I've read the whole thread on this and have the same exact (well almost) situation you have and looking for the answer. Im towelrooted and have Titanium backup installed. The other day I inadvertently erased my S5 (put the case on upside down in a dark room and mustve hit the wrong keys combo, yup a real dunce cap move). Anyway I restored the system apps and data from the recent Titanium backup and i'd say got about 90% back. Was missing pictures and wallpaper was back to stock. I'm really not sure if theres any way to have an exact image of the phone with just Titanium backup. Thats what I'm looking for, an exact image to restore but without all this custom ROM stuff. Did you ever find an answer??

Thanks much,
NS.
Click to expand...

I am, frankly, surprised that you couldn't recover the phone to its condition before data was lost. That is, after all, what backups are all about.

I have a major gripe with Titanium - customer support seems to come down to one or two lame pages and zero point zero zero access to anyone, even other users. This whole thread originated from that lack of support.

That said, I'm surprised that you were unable to backup all dynamic data (that is, all the files, etc. that are not created when the phone's OS boots up, that is, stuff created out of the ROMed code running - although the dynamic data, stuff that changes with phone use, should be open to backup). Anyway, MP3's, MP4's, and so on should be dead easy to backup. I'm not sure why that didn't happen. In short, I have no bright ideas about why your wheels fell off. I'm sure that if I'd been there to see what was done (or not) I could be of more help. Sorry 'bout that.

I'll look into a complete, all-phone Ti backup and try to identify where the the stuff you can't find (photos, etc.) is handled. Or not.
 
Thanks a lot. I'll continue to monitor this thread. Frankly I don't have a problem so much so with TB, it saved me a bunch of heartache when I restored… i did get just about everything back except some pics and settings. Granted had I had a lot of pix I cared about it could be a major loss.
 
smith058 said:
Titanium backup only backs up apps, system apps and user apps... for backing up your phone itself it's worthless, you can't count on it it to save your phone because it won't!
[...]
Click to expand...

Let's define "backing up the phone". If that includes backing up the ROM and being able to restore it, I can't see Ti doing that. But I don't expect it to. ROM's, short of outright failure, remember everything they should, and don't need to be backed up. Unless you're working with hacked ROM's of one flavor another. In that case, not trying to be nasty, if you don't know how to protect your hacked ROM, maybe you shouldn't be hacking ROM's?

But I don't see where Ti says it can't backup and restore the dynamic data (living in RAM or on an SD) in the phone. In that sense, I count that as backing up the phone.
 
Finally, on the original issue of "I have a 64G SD, I want to back it up, and restore it on a 128G SD", I've come to the conclusion Ti is a screen door on a submarine: useless. Unless there's sufficient room on the external SD to back up everything (external and internal SD), "ain't gonna happen nohow".

To make a long story short: my fix is to install the 128G in the S5, tell it to format the 128G SD, and then copy the original 64G SD to the 128G SD via a PC. At the moment, the 64G microSD is sitting in a SD adapter, the 128G microSD is sitting in an external USB reader, and TeraCopy is slowly copying everything from the 64 to the 128, and verifying the copy. It's stupid slow, it has all the elegance of hunting hummingbirds with a howitzer, but it's the only thing that seems to be working. Ti won't write external backup files, Acronis wrote gibberish on the 128, claiming it did a good restore, and all other guesses and tries tanked.
 
RBEmerson said:
Let's define "backing up the phone".
Click to expand...

Titanium Backup ("TB" most will call it for short) only backs up installed user and system apps and the settings/data associated with the apps. It doesn't backup personal files, pictures, music. Those you will want to backup on you external SD card. TB is great if you want/need to do a factory reset, TB will restore your phone to a close state to where it was app and settings wize. Settings and data does include email settings, Bluetooth settings, home scene settings, widget settings. TB will save you hours on resetting up your phone...

BUT...
What do you do when you use TB to freeze/remove a system app that you think is bloatware and you phone goes into a bootloop and won't load up? Or you install a root app like Wanam or an Xposed module and you bootloop? TB will not be able to help you... you will need a real recovery!

A real recovery is actually on a different partition than your system and can be accessed when your system will not boot (bootloop). In your recovery you can make an exact image copy of your full system partition as well as other crucial partitions. they call this backup a nandroid backup. It takes about 7 minutes to backup and 7 minutes to restore... When it makes the backup, it backs up every single thing except your external sd card. so yes that means it also backs up your internal sd card, so your phone will be exactly how it was when you made the backup

I hope this helps your understanding :)
 
Unless, for whatever reason, the phone has to go back to VZW. Whether they check the Knox counter is, I think, an open question. NTL I don't want to be on the losing side of that issue.
 
@smith058, im willing to take the plunge with one of the recovery methods you mentioned. Can u point.me in the right direction for any of those? Im on Verizon. Thx.
 
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