If I make a backup using .tar mode do I still need the blobs folder.
I understand the use of the blobs folder and why it could be an improvement on the time taken to make backups and the size of backups, but when copying the blobs folder from the internal sd card to the PC it takes forever....3375 folder with 2 small files in each is a pain...
So, I had been advised to make the backups in tar mode...my question is,,,,does that backup need the blobs folder or is the backup folder a complete backup?
Tar means the blobs folder no longer needs to be copied. All the partitions are tarred and contain everything. All the above is as far as I can remember and I would double check before you start relying on my word.
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This is correct as in: all backups created in TAR are a complete, in itself closed and contained backup, they do not rely on the blobs folder.
All backups created using the DUP format (eg. with the blobs folder) are of course still relying on the blobs folder. If you do not need those "old" backups anymore, you may remove the folders containing the referece files (eg 2012-11-19-etc folder) and the blobs folder altogether.
TAR may take longer to be created, but are a lot more convenient for managing different backups or backups of totally independent system setups (stock and cm, for example :victory. Single backups can be independently archived, deleted, moved etc.
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I did a backup with rom manager recovery mode and need to pull 2 pics from it but don't want to restore my old rom. Is there any way to mount the backup to pull the files.
I have a mac running 10.6.4 I am familiar with adb and the unix terminal.
Those files are iso files so I'm not so sure you can easily extract files from them. I haven't tried yet so ymmv.
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I gave a brief description of how to pull files from nandroid backups here:
Pulling your android_id from datadata.img
Basically you just want to compile/use unyaffs on the nandroid backup to extract all the files to grab your image.
unyaffs will extract all the files to the current working directory so it's useful to make a new directory, cd into it, and run the extraction from there.
Could i rename my nandroid back up folder the ending tree folder that holds the .android_secure.img, cache.img, data.img, nandroid.md5 and system.img ... like clockworkmod/backup/2010-11-25.05.05.13 could i just pop all those files into a .zip named whatever and direct him to clockwork recovery and flash zip from sd card?
Titanium backup igives you the option to create a update.zip, then it gives you two radio buttons one says titanium backup will be installed as user application and then System application.
I know that the whole create update.zip thing is for flashing it to the rom from recovery. But what is the diffrence bewteen those two options. What is best and what is the diffrence..
swirlin_1 said:
Could i rename my nandroid back up folder the ending tree folder that holds the .android_secure.img, cache.img, data.img, nandroid.md5 and system.img ... like clockworkmod/backup/2010-11-25.05.05.13 could i just pop all those files into a .zip named whatever and direct him to clockwork recovery and flash zip from sd card?
Titanium backup igives you the option to create a update.zip, then it gives you two radio buttons one says titanium backup will be installed as user application and then System application.
I know that the whole create update.zip thing is for flashing it to the rom from recovery. But what is the diffrence bewteen those two options. What is best and what is the diffrence..
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Click to collapse
By not renaming to update.zip, u can keep multiple versions of backups on ur phone. I tend to take a backup more or less everytime I try to make any changes, like applying themes I do not know, or am not confident of.
TitaniumBackup app seems to be Dropbox aware in that it has a button to 'Sync to Dropbox now!' But I am having a terrible time making them work together.
I had a TitaniumBackup folder in the phone from when made before flashing Cog 4.3. I just did another TitaniumBackup to capture all the apps I have added and commanded the 'Sync to Dropbox now!', but I cannot decipher exactly what it did, and where things are stored.
Now,
-my online Dropbox TitaniumBackup folder has some files dated when first backup was made and some from just now.
-same when the Dropbox app is opened on the phone. The TitaniumBackup folder is in the app along with Contacts, Photos, and Public folders.
-same with Dropbox folder on the PC
(I deleted this folder because of the mixed 'versions' of files in it--believing that that deletion would propagate to the phone and to the online store. It didn't. They are still there)
-when I use Root Explorer and look for these files, there is a TitaniumBackup folder in /sdcard/dropbox, and Public is also there, but not Contacts and Photos folders!!! (Why not? they show inside the dropbox app.) This folder also has the mixed dates on the files inside it.
So, I guess my original backup has been destroyed by most of the files being being overwritten (but I do have a copy I saved on an external drive off the home PC).
I just now do not have a feel at all for where the files are created, and where they are copied to if you use the standard "process" ...
When you run TitaniumBackup, where does it put the folder it makes?
When you tell TitaniumBackup to 'Sync to Dropbox now!', what folder (location) does it sync from and to where?
Finally, if you have Dropbox on phone, PC, and the online account, are changes in any of the three locations propagated and to where--the other two? To online only? I ask because the folder deletion on the PC did not get propagated anywhere.
Finally, am I to conclude that your current TitaniumBackup folder should be deleted before you run TitaniumBackup again?
1. when you run a backup the backups are stored in a folder called /sdcard/titaniumbackup
2. syncing to dropbox will only UPLOAD to your dropbox, and not replicate changes BACK to your phone
3. changes all populate through all devices, what you see in /sdcard/dropbox/ are files that you have accessed from your phone and are a local copy, not necessarily a folder that is also replicating to dropbox (from my understanding of using it. i have 30% of 5gb eaten up in dropbox and that folder only contains items that i have opened/uploaded on my phone)
4. NO! you do not need to delete the titaniumbackup folder located in /sdcard/ you can keep appending to it with your sub sequential backups. you just need to understand how to do the batch backups and how to clear out old items that you no longer want in your backup folder (this can be done within the titanium backup app)
Pirateghost said:
...4. NO! you do not need to delete the titaniumbackup folder located in /sdcard/ you can keep appending to it with your sub sequential backups. you just need to understand how to do the batch backups and how to clear out old items that you no longer want in your backup folder (this can be done within the titanium backup app)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks; that helps a lot.
On 4, though, I probably want my backups to contain "what the phone looks like right now.' So, I will normally just want to do all apps + data. That is what I did this time, and it seemed to merge the two rather than replace it. That's why I concluded I needed to delete the old backup off the phone, after saving a copy of it somewhere. That brought up the uncertainty then of how the Dropbox synced copies would react.
Wait, wait, wait! I don't understand this...
I downloaded a zip I want to flash to my PC.
I put it into Dropbox folder on PC.
I went into Dropbox app on the phone, the file showed there, press it and it downloads. So far, all is great.
I start ROM Manager to move the file from Dropbox to /sdcard so I can reboot to CWM and flash it.
The zip is not in /sdcard/dropbox !!! But it SHOWS when I open the Dropbox app. What the?
Where is the downloaded zip in the file structure so I can move it to /sdcard?
And arghhhh. Why is this always so hard.
Wtf?
Plug in the phone to your computer and copy the file you want.
You're doing it wrong
Sent from my atrix
Use Dropbox for file syncing, not flashing
I use Dropbox to keep a copy of my backup (created by TiBu). I agree that copying the rom file directly to your computer is far easier than introducing Dropbox.
OK, y'all do it a different way. Mine is wrong because it is different from how you do it. Thanks.
That would still leave my question unanswered...where did Dropbox store the file...why was it not in /sdcard/dropbox?
But later I found it; for some reason, some of dropbox files are where I expected, but THAT download was stored in /external_sd/dropbox for some reason. It is unclear how Dropbox chooses where to put stuff it syncs down.
So I was able to move the file to /sdcard and flash it easily.
Is there any way to change clockworkmod backup to flashable zip. The backup use a lot of space when I move it to my pc and decide to restore back, the md5 checksum doesnt match,
Haven't heard such a feature of flashable zip for CWM backup files. Besides, it's already compressed, so if it's quite large then maybe you do have a lot of files and data in your device.
Regarding checksum not matched; please do not rename or delete any folder / files from CWM backup folder contents when you do backup to PC.
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I faced the same problem few days ago, and this solution worked for me.
geekdevs.com/2011/10/solved-md5-mismatch-error-on-clockworkmod/
Long story short, had to send the phone in for repair, so I did the obligatory backups and unroot/reflash of factory images.
I don't have TWRP, too much hassle together with magisk for taking OTAs, so I took my backups (/data, /data/media) with tar/split/gzip.
Did my due dilligence to make sure the backup was good - resulting tar file extracts perfectly fine on my linux desktop.
Got my phone back, rerooted, ready to restore now. However, on the device, it stops extracting about 20 files in with 'invalid tar format'.
Tried again with busybox tar, and this time I get 'invalid tar magic'. Normally this suggests the tar is corrupted, but that doesn't explain why it's fine on my desktop. Note that the desktop archive I extracted is identical, e.g. it is the same one copied from the SD card I'm trying to restore now. What gives, since it's the same tar that created it in the first place... I've tried multiple versions/copies (this was a split archive since it was over 4GB in size - so I even recombined it on my host PC and pushed it to internal storage over ADB.) gzip has no issues with the outer compression (e.g I can gunzip the tar.gz fine) so the file itself doesn't seem corrupted.
Any suggestions on how I can get my /data back? Unfortunately I cannot just copy the files extracted on my desktop as this would mangle the permissions... and manually trying to fix them for the umpteen-hundred various folders is not practical...
I guess I'm hoping someone in the know might be able to point me to a different version of tar, or another tool (already tried cpio -H tar, not supported on android) that would extract things successfully.
I managed to get things to work by using a later version of tar from https://forum.xda-developers.com/android/software/utils-data-recovery-tools-testdisk-t3709380
However, I've now hit a new issue. After extracting to /data/data, or /data/app, the files are there, but vanish after a reboot, so the restore is incomplete.