Help me understand "recovery"

[anon(558804)]

I just wanted to make a nandroid backup of my phone.

I have ROM Toolbox, which uses ROM Manager. If I try to Reboot into Recovery via ROM Manager, the phone hangs (yellow "!" inside white triangle), so I assume I don't *have* a recovery. (If there was one, it may have disappeared while I was thrashing about trying to get the OTA update to work, which included a couple of factory resets.) ROM Manager has an option to flash a recovery, but their list of choices doesn't include the RAZR. Without the recovery, I can't do a nandroid backup.

I'm new to this, so I don't really understand "recovery":

• What is it, and what does it do?
• Is it one file or many?
• Where do I look for it on the phone?
• Does it have to be made specially for the RAZR?
• Where can I get one if I don't have one?
• Is ClockworkMod Recovery the only one or are there others?

Can someone enlighten me?

 

[Paul627g]

Well to make things simple...

Recovery is two things..

1. Stock recovery is usually very basic... Allows you to do a factory reset and wipe the phone..... Some phones may have a different option or two but that is the extent of it for stock.

2. Custom Recoveries.. CWM (ClockWorkMod) which is the standard, then there are some others like TWRP and some misc. customized CWM's... These are what is needed to flash ROMS, kernels, themes, mods, make Nandroid backups/restores, etc.

Depending how root is achieved on the device you may need to place CWM on your device before hand to flash a Superuser (root access) file to provide root or vise versa... It just all depends on each individual devices means of obtaining root.

In case of your RAZR, I'm not familiar with this device but will need to see how they obtain root and CWM. CWM does have to be customized to your specific device, its not something you can just grab from any device and throw it on there. Yes it may appear the same but there is permissions and file locations, etc are device specific.

That is the basic run down on recoveries and now as I mentioned hit the Rooting guides for the RAZR and see how its done and you should be on your way. I wouldn't flash anything that doesn't say RAZR specific unless otherwise told from a reliable source in ROM Manager or any other means or else it could case you to loose root or your recovery or even worse.. Brick your device.

Good luck.

 

[anon(558804)]

I rooted the device using the DoomLord Zergrush (?) method, and I'm still rooted. I don't know what it did about recovery, but it did install something called Bionic Bootstrap, which I've now frozen with Titanium Backup.

 

[the one and only M]

I rooted the device using the DoomLord Zergrush (?) method, and I'm still rooted. I don't know what it did about recovery, but it did install something called Bionic Bootstrap, which I've now frozen with Titanium Backup.

There is a razr specific bootstrap app now. I may be wrong but there are features missing with the modified bionic version. There is also safestrap by hashcode that is available for the razr. Both pretty much do the same thing and are based on cwm.