Root [Verizon] 100% backed up?

[RBEmerson]

Actually, I did try Linux for this problem but, as I think I mentioned, Linux doesn't really grok exFAT. I tried one set of drivers but they didn't work with any of the live CD's I have or my regular Linux box (a now mostly retired mail server). Feh.

Past that, a good working definition of insanity: "Doing the same thing repeatedly in hopes of a different outcome". I think I qualify for having been, essentially, doing the same things over and over.

At this point I'm still making the last, and largest, set of copies (the MP3's). So far, so good.

 

[Zoandroid]

Actually, I did try Linux for this problem but, as I think I mentioned, Linux doesn't really grok exFAT. I tried one set of drivers but they didn't work with any of the live CD's I have or my regular Linux box (a now mostly retired mail server). Feh.

Past that, a good working definition of insanity: "Doing the same thing repeatedly in hopes of a different outcome". I think I qualify for having been, essentially, doing the same things over and over.

At this point I'm still making the last, and largest, set of copies (the MP3's). So far, so good.

Kinda reminds me of how I used to plan whole weekends to reinstall Windows 3.1, and later Win95 on a regular basis back in the day. You've been at this how many days now?

 

[RBEmerson]

At least when I did those jobs it was billable time. Now I'm being billed for the time. By SWMBO. The honey-do list grows with every file transfer I attempt.

 

[Zoandroid]

At least when I did those jobs it was billable time. Now I'm being billed for the time. By SWMBO. The honey-do list grows with every file transfer I attempt.

SWMBO?

I know how that works. The solution is to get HER involved in computers!

It took years to accomplish, but now SHE is the one who won't put her smartphone down at the dinner table. lol

 

[NSDroid]

Hi I don't see the backup I made when I'm in the Safe strap restore screen. I have the micro SD card selected but shows no files. Outside of safestrap it's there. What could be wrong?

 

[RBEmerson]

UPDATE: Sigh... TeraCopy is, in fact, telling the truth. The copies aren't valid. I'm not sure I understand TeraCopy's reaction to the copy but... if I use the native Win7 copy, the MP3's go where they should. I can even play them. When I eject the SD (using the Win7 eject function, not just pop the SD out of the reader) and re-mount it, the MP3's folders are present, but they're empty(!!). It seems as though some cache isn't writing out to the SD before Win7 says the SD can be removed. I think this is what TeraCopy was trying to tell me.

So the challenge is to find out why Win7 is stepping on its ...uh... necktie so thoroughly.

 

[RBEmerson]

h2testw wrote the end of the story. Defective or bogus 128G microSD. Sigh...

 

[Zoandroid]

h2testw wrote the end of the story. Defective or bogus 128G microSD. Sigh...

If you don't mind my asking, where did it come from and what was the ballpark price? I looked at 128GB cards on Amazon when I found out the S5 supported them. But at over $100 each, I passed.

I recently read there are bogus cheapo Chinese SD knockoffs on the market. I feel its best to stick with known quality brand names on them, from places like Amazon with very good return policies.

 

[Zoandroid]

Hi I don't see the backup I made when I'm in the Safe strap restore screen. I have the micro SD card selected but shows no files. Outside of safestrap it's there. What could be wrong?

Before you head down the wrong path, check the internal storage to see if there is a TWRP folder. That's where the nandroid would go. The path is typically:

TWRP/BACKUPS/(then a nine character identifier code unique to your S5)/xx

where xx is a folder with the name of the nandroid, either named by TWRP with a screwy date code, or named whatever you changed it to.

There should not be a TWRP folder in internal storage. If their is, you did not have Safestrap's TWRP recovery set to use extSdCard. The TWRP folder should be under extSdCard. If there is no TWRP folder, then the backup did not happen successfully for some reason.

Did you remember to install the SD Card Write patch after rooting with Safestrap? If not, I don't think it can write to the SD Card. Someone please correct me if I am wrong about.that.

 

[NSDroid]

Before you head down the wrong path, check the internal storage to see if there is a TWRP folder. That's where the nandroid would go. The path is typically:

TWRP/BACKUPS/(then a nine character identifier code unique to your S5)/xx

where xx is a folder with the name of the nandroid, either named by TWRP with a screwy date code, or named whatever you changed it to.

There should not be a TWRP folder in internal storage. If their is, you did not have Safestrap's TWRP recovery set to use extSdCard. The TWRP folder should be under extSdCard. If there is no TWRP folder, then the backup did not happen successfully for some reason.

Did you remember to install the SD Card Write patch after rooting with Safestrap? If not, I don't think it can write to the SD Card. Someone please correct me if I am wrong about.that.

It's definitely on the extsdcard. But Safestrap isn't finding or recognizing it. Maybe I'll try to make another one and see what happens.

 

[RBEmerson]

If you don't mind my asking, where did it come from and what was the ballpark price? I looked at 128GB cards on Amazon when I found out the S5 supported them. But at over $100 each, I passed.

I recently read there are bogus cheapo Chinese SD knockoffs on the market. I feel its best to stick with known quality brand names on them, from places like Amazon with very good return policies.

It's a low-ball eBay chip. I've been fine with 32's in the past, but obviously not with at least this 128. Amazon has Kingston 128G chips for ~$80.

Coming back to an old theme, if I could get an off-phone backup of the phone, I'd be fine with 64G. It's the backup issue that's driving the need for 128G.

 

[Zoandroid]

It's a low-ball eBay chip. I've been fine with 32's in the past, but obviously not with at least this 128. Amazon has Kingston 128G chips for ~$80.

Coming back to an old theme, if I could get an off-phone backup of the phone, I'd be fine with 64G. It's the backup issue that's driving the need for 128G.

Sorry to hear this, but I guess it is to be expected.

 

[Zoandroid]

It's definitely on the extsdcard. But Safestrap isn't finding or recognizing it. Maybe I'll try to make another one and see what happens.

In all my dealings over the years with Clockworkmod and TWRP Recovery, and now the Safestrap TWRP variant, the only time I ever ran into a Recovery not seeing a file that was clearly on an SD card were these 2 incidents:

1 - when I tried to flash a zip file that was not in the root directory of the SD card. I had it in a subfolder. Moving it to the root directory fixed the problem.

2- An instance where the name of the zip file I wanted to flash fell too low in the alphabetical sort of folders and files on the long list of stuff I had on the SD card. I had to put a "_" underscore in the beginning of the zip file name so that moved it to the top. I think I was still using Clockworkmod when that happened. It was a known issue at the time.

However........I don't think either of these apply. TWRP expects to find the backup exactly where it put it, in the TWRP/BACKUPS/(phone identifier) folder.

Hmm. What if somehow your identifier code got CHANGED?? That might cause TWRP not to find it.

Run another backup, and look to see if there are now two different "numbered" subfolders under TWRP/BACKUPS. If there are, then the ID number is now different. But that should not be, because that number is your phone's serial number, and is unique to every phone. But if this DOES pan out, you can change the number named-folder of your original backup to whatever number the phone is now using, and it should allow TWRP to see it again from the Recovery screen. Then I would be looking into why the number changed, if it did.

You can use an app named "Phone Info *SAMSUNG* by VNDNGUYEN to see the serial number of your phone, or I presume it is inside the battery compartment somewhere too.

 

[RBEmerson]

Sorry to hear this, but I guess it is to be expected.

"Some days you're the windshield, some days you're the bug."

The new 128G is, so far, doing well with H2testw.

 

[RBEmerson]

And then it cratered. It's a re-marked 16G SD.

Warning: Only 72549 of 127968 MByte tested.
The media is likely to be defective.
15.5 GByte OK (32629831 sectors)
42.3 GByte DATA LOST (88910777 sectors)
Details:0 KByte overwritten (0 sectors)
0 KByte slightly changed (< 8 bit/sector, 0 sectors)
42.3 GByte corrupted (88910777 sectors)
0 KByte aliased memory (0 sectors)
First error at offset: 0x00000003da2efe00
Expected: 0x00000003da2efe00
Found: 0x0000000000000000
H2testw version 1.3

 

[Zoandroid]

And then it cratered. It's a re-marked 16G SD.

Where'd this one come from? That is exactly what I had read about bogus SDs. They rebadge a small one as a big one and charge accordingly.

 

[RBEmerson]

Other than someone on eBay (good rep.), who knows? Anyway, he's good with a return and refund. Lesson taught yet again: TINSTAAFL. Or... they took away the warning signs and nature's doing the rest (see .sig below). [/LOL]

 

[NSDroid]

A couple of things to note: I restored from TIBU and now my battery is back to normal. Doing that put my apps back to the internal memory card from the extsdcard. At least it seems that way to me. Second thing: I did another nandroid backup and can now see it if I choose to restore it. The naming convention makes absolutely no sense to me but at least now it's there. Still don't know why the 1st nandroid backup isn't showing up from within Safestrap.

 

[Zoandroid]

A couple of things to note: I restored from TIBU and now my battery is back to normal. Doing that put my apps back to the internal memory card from the extsdcard. At least it seems that way to me. Second thing: I did another nandroid backup and can now see it if I choose to restore it. The naming convention makes absolutely no sense to me but at least now it's there. Still don't know why the 1st nandroid backup isn't showing up from within Safestrap.

Well, that's good news. I hadn't realized you moved apps to the SD card, but I wouldn't think that would affect Recovery operation. However, some apps don't work right when you move them to an SD Card, which could possibly increase battery usage. Some apps will even mention not moving them in the description of the app on the Store.

If you could please do a few more things I would be grateful, as I'd like to know the answers to a couple questions, for helping others in a similar situation in the future.

1- look and see if there is more than one subfolder with an 8 character name (phone serial number) now residing under TWRP/BACKUPS, or if it is still just one folder.

2 - Is your initial nandroid backup also in the same numbered folder as your newest backup? If it is not, move it there and then please see if Recovery can now see it when setting up to Restore a nandroid. If for some reason you move the inital nandroid as I asked, and TWRP still doesn't see it, then it may be corrupt or something.

The nandroid name - Well, the first part of it is a numerical date and time code along the lines of what I like to use. So my code for today, July 31, 2014, at 11:04 AM would be
2014_0731_1104 but they also add the seconds to the end, so perhaps 110452. However, there is a flaw in the process both TWRP and Clockworkmod recoveries use to gather this date and time from the device, and for the past several years both of the teams making those utilities have said they are unable to remedy it. So the date and time are there, but they point to like 1970.

The remainder of the cryptic name can be seen if you open Settings and scroll all the way down to About Phone. Then scroll down to Build Number. I see on my S5:

KOT49H.G900VVRU1ANCG

Which is probably what you see too. It is an identifier for the ROM, if I am not mistaken. Which means if someday our bootloader gets unlocked and you flash a completely different custom ROM, or you take an OTA update pushed by Verizon someday to update the ROM, that sequence would change. I am not privy to what all the characters really mean to those who know, but you may recognize G900V as the model of our Verizon S5.

 

[NSDroid]

https://www.dropbox.com/sc/gfdhiin39c4g9xz/AAALm6z3yfIbFO_tTOm7ZCgla
Above is how the folder looks.

This is how the folder looks before I moved the serial number looking folder down a level. When I did that and went to restore again I had no backups showing up in the recovery tool. And oddly the one marked 072514 was done yesterday so that's also very weird. I have a feeling u may be right and that one file is corrupt. Going to move it up one level where it originally was and see if the recovery tool still sees the "good" backup. Confused? No? Well I am &#9786;
Update: after putting the folder up a level safestrap now sees the restore file again. Strange.

 

[Zoandroid]

https://www.dropbox.com/sc/gfdhiin39c4g9xz/AAALm6z3yfIbFO_tTOm7ZCgla
Above is how the folder looks.

This is how the folder looks before I moved the serial number looking folder down a level. When I did that and went to restore again I had no backups showing up in the recovery tool. And oddly the one marked 072514 was done yesterday so that's also very weird. I have a feeling u may be right and that one file is corrupt. Going to move it up one level where it originally was and see if the recovery tool still sees the "good" backup. Confused? No? Well I am &#9786;
Update: after putting the folder up a level safestrap now sees the restore file again. Strange.

The nandroid needs to stay in that numbered folder, because that is how TWRP keeps track of nandroid backups specific to your phone. So it isn't going to see any if they get moved out of that numbered folder.

I'd like to know, if you put the original backup into that same numbered folder, if TWRP then sees both backups. I was getting some help on this issue from another forum, and they asked me to let them know how it all worked out.

 

[NSDroid]

Hi, the original backup was always in the weird numbered folder. All i did was move the whole folder down into the newer backup directory that was created when i did the second Nandroid backup. All that did was make both of them unreadable by Safestrap recovery. When I moved the weird numbered folder back up a level, Safestrap sees the 2nd newer Nandroid backup again that I did on 7/30, weirdly named 072514

Of note: the first Nandroid I did was of the stock rom slot as detailed in the video someone recommended on here at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5d-cPtK-CR8 but I don't really think doing that would create this problem but who knows.

Let me know if you'd like me to test anything going forward.

Btw, I restored the backup and it was exactly as I had it that day (very cool). Given that though, why would I need Titanium backup?? What does that get me? Incremental backups between Nandroids? Also would you know of any task manager tool I can use to do the Nandroids automatically?

Thanks again!

 

[Zoandroid]

Hi, the original backup was always in the weird numbered folder. All i did was move the whole folder down into the newer backup directory that was created when i did the second Nandroid backup. All that did was make both of them unreadable by Safestrap recovery. When I moved the weird numbered folder back up a level, Safestrap sees the 2nd newer Nandroid backup again that I did on 7/30, weirdly named 072514

Of note: the first Nandroid I did was of the stock rom slot as detailed in the video someone recommended on here at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5d-cPtK-CR8 but I don't really think doing that would create this problem but who knows.

Let me know if you'd like me to test anything going forward.

Btw, I restored the backup and it was exactly as I had it that day (very cool). Given that though, why would I need Titanium backup?? What does that get me? Incremental backups between Nandroids? Also would you know of any task manager tool I can use to do the Nandroids automatically?

Thanks again!

A strange situation indeed. I'll have a look at that video when I get the time. I'm glad to hear your 2nd nandroid is OK, but have to wonder what happened with the first one.

Titanium Backup (TIBU) is a powerful tool that has multiple uses. I am sure I barely use all it has to offer, but one of its most valuable tools for me is the ability to restore older versions of apps I have backed up. I keep a backup level of 7. Programmers seem to LOVE to "fix what ain't broken" and are constantly fiddling with what was initially a good app, usually breaking something in the process, or at the least confounding us with constant changes to an already familiar GUI. There are some apps I never update for this reason. I like the version I have, and it works very well, having seen firsthand how badly they screwed up the next update.

Once upon a time, TIBU had the ability to "break" a market link, essentially preventing what is now the Store from trying to dun us to update it. Google changed the way things work and now TIBU can't do that anymore. But what it can do is freeze apps, and restore older versions of backed up apps, essentially working around the backup issue when desired. So with some judicious application of those tools, we can still have the convenience of "update all" and yet in the end keep an older version of one or more apps.

Another invaluable option with TIBU is that you can preserve your apps and their settings in your TIBU backups from one device, and then use TIBU to "restore" them to a new device, all set up and ready to use, rather than having to manually install each app over again. Now the difference here is that you definitely do not want to ever try to restore a nandroid backup to a device from which it was not made. Very bad things could happen. So you can't take the nandroid of your current S5 and restore it to your next Android phone. But you definitely can preserve the TIBU backup folder on your SD Card, and use that card in your next Android phone and restore all the apps you had backed up on the S5.

As far as an automatic scheduled nandroid backup, that would indeed be cool, but I know of no way to do it. I suppose it technically could be done with a script of some sort, but that's outta my league. It would need to be able to restart in recovery, make sure the SD card still had enough room for the nandroid, and then reboot system when done. And since the auto generated nandroid names are useless, I'd want my own custom name assigned along the way, which would probably get into the very same roadblock that prevents TWRP from having the correct date and time in the name now.

 

[Zoandroid]

Hi, the original backup was always in the weird numbered folder. All i did was move the whole folder down into the newer backup directory that was created when i did the second Nandroid backup.

I've been thinking about this and am unclear exactly what you mean by "newer backup directory that was created when I did the second Nandroid backup".

Originally there should have been this path

extSdCard/TWRP/BACKUPS/xxxxxxxx/ (where xxxxxxxx is your SN of your S5) and in that folder there should have been the nandroid (which is actually a folder with several files inside) with a cryptic name ending in VRU1ANCG.

Unless you changed something before making the second backup, the second backup's nandroid folder with a name ending the same way should have also appeared in that same xxxxxxxx folder under the exact same path. Every nandroid you make should appear in that same xxxxxxxx folder.

So what did you mean by "newer backup directory that was created"?

 

[NSDroid]

I've been thinking about this and am unclear exactly what you mean by "newer backup directory that was created when I did the second Nandroid backup".

Originally there should have been this path

extSdCard/TWRP/BACKUPS/xxxxxxxx/ (where xxxxxxxx is your SN of your S5) and in that folder there should have been the nandroid (which is actually a folder with several files inside) with a cryptic name ending in VRU1ANCG.

Unless you changed something before making the second backup, the second backup's nandroid folder with a name ending the same way should have also appeared in that same xxxxxxxx folder under the exact same path. Every nandroid you make should appear in that same xxxxxxxx folder.

So what did you mean by "newer backup directory that was created"?

What I'm saying is somehow when I did a backup from Safestrap recovery a new directory appeared in the screenshot I sent. So now in the TWRP/Backups directory I have 2 folders: 1 named XXXXXXXX (serial # i assume) and another named "Android Image backup 072514". If i go into the serial # folder I have a folder called "stock-2014-02