After Rooting: Stock Fryo w/Backup in a White-Hot Hurry

[Flaspeneer]

After Rooting: Stock Froyo w/Backup in a White-Hot Hurry

Apparently, Sprint's pushing Gingerbread out to my phone whether it's rooted or not. I haven't OK'd the installation, but I'm still running Bonsai 4.1.3 and feel compelled to Odin back to Froyo immediate mot.

Trouble is, I don't want to lose any of my work: Writings, files, emails, etc., etc. I'm not worried about getting the environment back so much as the individual files.

Is there a way to Odin back to stock without losing what's on your SD card? If not, is there a way to back up all that information permanently other than dragging and dropping to your laptop -- either a disk image or a way of converting the volume back from ext4 without losing the data?

Sorry to be the typical grasping panicky visitor on an android forum, but I wasn't expecting to get evicted by my cellphone provider.

 

[CmdrGuard#AC]

I'm in the same boat as you, Flaspeneer.

Just bumping this post up further...

 

[ratsttam]

If your files are on the SD card, than you are OK. Odin doesn't touch the SD card at all. If you want to be extra sure of this, just remove it from your phone before you do anything in odin, and re-install it afterwards.

If you've been reading in the Nexus S and S4g forums, the internal memory that replaces the SD card, does get wiped on those by using Odin.

 

[Paul627g]

Apparently, Sprint's Pushing Gingerbread out to my phone whether it's rooted or not. I haven't OK'd the installation, but I'm still running Bonsai 4.1.3 and feel compelled to Odin back to Froyo immediate mot.

Trouble is, I don't want to lose any of my work: Writings, files, emails, etc., etc. I'm not worried about getting the environment back so much as the individual files.

Is there a way to Odin back to stock without losing what's on your SD card? If not, is there a way to back up all that information permanently other than dragging and dropping to your laptop -- either a disk image or a way of converting the volume back from ext4 without losing the data?

Sorry to be the typical grasping panicky visitor on an android forum, but I wasn't expecting to get evicted by my cellphone provider.

I'm in the same boat as you, Flaspeneer.

Just bumping this post up further...

If your files are on the SD card, than you are OK. Odin doesn't touch the SD card at all. If you want to be extra sure of this, just remove it from your phone before you do anything in odin, and re-install it afterwards.

If you've been reading in the Nexus S and S4g forums, the internal memory that replaces the SD card, does get wiped on those by using Odin.

Two choices...

Flash a fairly stock version of official GB in CWM and save yourself some headaches..
[ROM]Mostly Stock EI22 | Update 4 11/12

or Odin back, Procedure #1

[How to] Factory Restore (or Fix a Bricked Phone)

Then do the manual update/OTA and root your phone again...

Rooting EI22 Gingerbread Instructions


As ratsttam posted, your contents of your sdcard will remain safe... Use Titanium or My Backup Root to backup your important data and then you can do a data only restore once you are updated to GB.

 

[Paul627g]

FYI ratsttam.. We don't truthfully have a working version of Odin on the NS4G.... Instead there is a OneClickRoot/OneClickUnroot now available... But your correct on the other fact of it wiping the internal SDCARD on ONLY THE NS4G.

 

[Flaspeneer]

I can't tell you how excellent it is to have spent the entire night working and then open this thread to find such great advice.

Sounds as if the best solution might be to

1. Back up my phone both to the web (privacy issues!?) and my SD card with Titanium and MyBackups, use an app-sharing utility to send a list of my apps to my gmail account and remove my SD card out of sheer superstition, and then

2. Either (i) Odin to stock, allow Sprint's upgrade and then run the data restores and re-download my list of apps or (ii) flash the "mostly stock" GB ROM linked to by Paul and do little else but offer lights to my next-door neighbor's cigar-smoking harem if the rest goes smoothly.

I'm also going to take screen caps of my desktop and send them to myself because I love the way it's set up at the moment.

I thought there were more steps before moving from a Froyo ROM to GB than option 2 suggests. Was I wrong about that? Isn't there an ext4 to RFS step as well?

 

[Paul627g]

I can't tell you how excellent it is to have spent the entire night working and then open this thread to find such great advice.

Sounds as if the best solution might be to

1. Back up my phone both to the web (privacy issues!?) and my SD card with Titanium and MyBackups, use an app-sharing utility to send a list of my apps to my gmail account and remove my SD card out of sheer superstition, and then

2. Either (i) Odin to stock, allow Sprint's upgrade and then run the data restores and re-download my list of apps or (ii) flash the "mostly stock" GB ROM linked to by Paul and do little else but offer lights to my next-door neighbor's cigar-smoking harem if the rest goes smoothly.

I thought there were additional steps before moving from a Froyo ROM to GB than option 2 suggests. Was I wrong about that?

Really there is no need to do the online backup with Titanium or My Backup Root... I have never done that either do to privacy and someone else holding my stuff on their servers. Back it up to your sdcard and that will be sufficient since nothing on your sdcard is ever touched when using Odin or anything else... Its a "safe spot sorta speak".

The rest you seem to understand very well. If your rooted, then I would go the ROM route of flashing that Mostly stock ROM... Make it easy on yourself especially if you plan on rooting again down the road this would be the smarter approach.

 

[Flaspeneer]

Thanks tons, Paul. The online backup made me leery as well (and I'm not a fan of 60s hallucinogens).

Here's another question I'm guessing my brother by another mother, CmdrGuard, can relate to:

How can I kill Sprint's really irritating prompt to install the stock Gingerbread upgrade, which seems to pop up every ten minutes? It's only a matter of time before I'm fiddling with my phone at a bus stop and inadvertently tell the install to go ahead and ruin everything.

Getting rid of that might give me the space to think more calmly while upgrading to your zesty bouillon-enhanced stock ROM.

 

[Paul627g]

Thanks tons, Paul. The online backup made me leery as well (and I'm not a fan of 60s hallucinogens).

Here's another question I'm guessing my brother by another mother, CmdrGuard, can relate to:

How can I kill Sprint's really irritating prompt to install the stock Gingerbread upgrade, which seems to pop up every ten minutes? It's only a matter of time before I'm fiddling with my phone at a bus stop and inadvertently tell the install to go ahead and ruin everything.

Getting rid of that might give me the space to think more calmly while upgrading to your zesty bouillon-enhanced stock ROM.

Read up in this thread below... I'm not sure if they have a solid solution for it yet but they were working on it...

[Q] HELP How to STOP update popup?

 

[Flaspeneer]

This was supposed to go far better than it did.

I did all of my backups and then tried manually booting into CWM to back up my present ROM and flash the one linked to here. Pressing the power, sound and camera buttons either booted me into Bonsai or resulted in a graphic of the battery.

Booting into ROM Manager (or whatever it's called -- can't check it from my phone ATM), I elected to do a backup and then install the "Mostly Stock" ROM, an attempt which met with failure (I tried to forward the report spewed by my attempt but, apparently, it didn't reach my gmail account). CWM's error message said it had difficulty mounting the source for the backup. When I returned to my desktop, Launcher Pro looked odd and my passwords fields were all coming up blank.

That should have tipped me off, but n-o-o-o. I'd done my backups and, by God, I was going to install the GB ROM it had taken a week to download at work. (Beware the mulish ROM enthusiast.) Besides, I thought, Bonsai now looks a bit off, so there's nothing gained by sticking with my hard-won obsessive-compulsive desktop.

I tried removing my SD card, but CWM wasn't having it. "Must attach SD Card before installing ROM," it insisted (or words to that effect).

I booted into CWM from ROM Shredder 2000 yet again, but this time, I simply tried wiping the caches and installing the MostlyStock ROM. Again, I met with failure -- but this time, the failure created a loop I've been completely unable to break.

It starts with the Bonsai splash design, then the Bonsai startup screen with a Playstation-2-ready graphic of an actual tree, then the pulsating "Epic 4G Galaxy S" graphic one normally gets just before the screen-lock appears and the desktop begins to load.

But then something happens which I've never seen before:

A primitive screen appears with a rudimentary green man and the message, "Welcome to SPH-D700. Touch the Android to Begin." Just in case that prompt baffled underachievers everywhere, the white silhouette of a pointing finger moves back and forth toward the android, threatening to molest it in the manner of the nervously giggling Pillsbury Dough Boy.

From that point on, nothing I do alters the course of events. If I press the "dial emergency number" button, I get a dial screen ever so briefly; "change language" does nothing; holding down the power button gets you the "power off/reboot phone" prompt, and powering down the phone even gives you the briefest hint it will work, but then the Bonsai tree graphic returns, the cycle repeats endlessly, and only pulling the battery will cause it to stop.

And as the primitive screen offers phony choices, I hear that little beeping motive that normally tells me my phone is connected or disconnected from the internet or something else: C A-Flat G C.

Clearly, I can't exchange the phone in this condition even though I have insurance, because a rooted ROM's splash screen is the first thing they'd see. I suppose I'll try Odining tomorrow, but can anything really penetrate that loop?

I'm contemplating picking up a stock OEM Samsung micro-SD tomorrow to make sure I can keep this one in whatever state it's in right now.

One good thing: At least I can boot into download recovery (power + 1 on keyboard). That might mean I'll be able to Odin back to stock on my PC laptop, which is at my grillfiend's place at the moment (but which I'll be visiting tomorrow night).

 

[Flaspeneer]

Update:

Odined back to stock, evolved from Eclair to Gingerbread, my SD's fine and my backups seem to be ready for my next rooting adventure. GB's fun so far, but I forgot how much I didn't miss the bloatware.

Will be moving back to rootville once a great ROM based on stock GB's available (or possibly the one I was trying to flash in the first place, since I might be driven bonkers in the next few hours by NASCAR, ESPN and Sprint TV).