Has anyone bricked their phone by flashing it too many times? Does anyone know what media the ROM uses and how many times we can burn it?
devsk said:
Has anyone bricked their phone by flashing it too many times? Does anyone know what media the ROM uses and how many times we can burn it?
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IIRC Samsung rates the flash portion of the MCP at a minimum of 100k writes before a block fails. You shouldn't be concerned about the wear from flashing the /system directory so much as wear from /data directory. However, all modern flash controllers will spread out block usage so its not as if your app that is constantly updating its files will keep writing to the same block. All in all, your phone is likely to die of obsolescence or a mechanical failure before the flash goes bad.
devsk said:
Has anyone bricked their phone by flashing it too many times? Does anyone know what media the ROM uses and how many times we can burn it?
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I am up to close to 100 times already in 2 months, so far, no issues.
I was just wondering, for those of you people that had the I9000M Internal SD fail can you answer the following (approximately):
how many apps did you have installed?
how much of the internal SD was used?
I'm just trying to figure out why they're dying. I have one myself and I'm not exactly using it to its full capacity. I was wondering if people that used their Internal SD more heavily were the ones that were have problems.
nemethb said:
I was just wondering, for those of you people that had the I9000M Internal SD fail can you answer the following (approximately):
how many apps did you have installed?
how much of the internal SD was used?
I'm just trying to figure out why they're dying. I have one myself and I'm not exactly using it to its full capacity. I was wondering if people that used their Internal SD more heavily were the ones that were have problems.
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I was using about 4.5 GB on mine with about 110+ apps. I don't think it has anything to do with the amount being used though. More with the flashing of a Froyo firmware, specifically, doing a factory wipe in Recovery Mode of a Froyo ROM. I was able to flash a Froyo ROM successfully and have it boot up properly once before I decided to do a wipe and pretty much screwed up my internal SD.
dawgpound6985 said:
I was using about 4.5 GB on mine with about 110+ apps. I don't think it has anything to do with the amount being used though. More with the flashing of a Froyo firmware, specifically, doing a factory wipe in Recovery Mode of a Froyo ROM. I was able to flash a Froyo ROM successfully and have it boot up properly once before I decided to do a wipe and pretty much screwed up my internal SD.
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That's the thing though. One person having an issue doesn't which they think resulted from 'this' may not apply to everyone. This is why I'm trying to take a sample and find out what is the biggest culprit (i.e. lag fix, flashing ROMs, amount of storage, etc.).
i believe this is also the cause of my sdcard corruption. ever since i installed froyo, i lost half the sdcard, and now i can't mount it in recovery.
i can't comment yet
still working
have over 400 apps installed
only around 400 MB free in the internal SD everything else consume by Apps and Maps
i keep changing apps frecuently, and installing updates as they appear on Android Market
I was using about 10GB of my internal SD card when I chose to download a Froyo build (JPK). Soon after installing it, I tried plugging it into my computer via Mass Storage mode, and then couldn't get out of it. Eventually the phone went blank, it vibrated a few times, and the only way to get it to do anything was to pull the battery. Once I did that, the internal SD storage was toast.
I was trying quite a few things to get it to recognize the internal storage, but in the end I ended up bricking the phone even more. Now it will bring up the Galaxy S GT-9000 screen, light up the Back/Menu buttons for a few seconds, and then reboot. Download mode and recovery mode are now gone and the only thing I've had it do is go into Forced Upload mode (which as far as I've searched) is pointless for us now.
I have a feeling it's more related to the lagfixes. I had uninstalled the Voodoo one soon after trying it out, but I guess that wasn't enough.
Devhux said:
I was using about 10GB of my internal SD card when I chose to download a Froyo build (JPK). Soon after installing it, I tried plugging it into my computer via Mass Storage mode, and then couldn't get out of it. Eventually the phone went blank, it vibrated a few times, and the only way to get it to do anything was to pull the battery. Once I did that, the internal SD storage was toast.
I was trying quite a few things to get it to recognize the internal storage, but in the end I ended up bricking the phone even more. Now it will bring up the Galaxy S GT-9000 screen, light up the Back/Menu buttons for a few seconds, and then reboot. Download mode and recovery mode are now gone and the only thing I've had it do is go into Forced Upload mode (which as far as I've searched) is pointless for us now.
I have a feeling it's more related to the lagfixes. I had uninstalled the Voodoo one soon after trying it out, but I guess that wasn't enough.
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Sorry, but what? Let me get this straight, you tried voodoo lag fix, uninstalled immediately, and yet you still believe it is the lagfix that destroyed the SD card? You think that applying the lagfix mod somehow utterly destroys your SD card even though you've used it for an extremely short amount of time? If that's true then most root users would have bricked their vibrants already.
Seriously, that makes no sense. I stand by my theory that there's a bad batch of SD cards that went into the i9000m production. Bad SD batches happen all the time. Not something uncommon. On top of that, all Voodoo lagfix does is change the file system of the SD card. Would your hard drive die if you formatted it from ntfs to fat32? No. This is not mentioning there are quite a few vibrants that have not used lagfix with dead sd cards.
If it was purely a hardware failure of the flash chips, then it would make sense to have the failures occur randomly. As it is right now, most of the failures seem to happen when people flash the newer Froyo builds (or very soon afterwards).
As far as the lagfix is concerned, I'm by no means implying that this is the only cause of the failures, but if something is going wrong in the conversion of file systems (however minute it may be), it is possible for the file system to become corrupted over time.
I don't think we know for sure whether it's a hardware failure or a software one. This is made even more difficult by the fact that we are generally limited in what recovery options are made available (not like a desktop, where I could boot a Linux distro off a USB stick and directly access the file system to troubleshoot). I do realize some have been able to try and get utilities like GParted to run on the phone's internal memory, but it's still not nearly as convenient as running the same utility on a desktop HDD/SSD.
Feel free to disagree with me, but I know once I get my phone back, I won't be installing a lagfix (or a custom build for that matter).
Hmm.. So i9000m's had a bad batch of memory? interesting. I'll remember that when someone comes asking for problems and see if their device is a i9000m , BTW what is the i9000m ? Captivate?
i9000m = Canada Bell Mobility version of Samsung vibrant
i9000 = international version
nemethb said:
That's the thing though. One person having an issue doesn't which they think resulted from 'this' may not apply to everyone. This is why I'm trying to take a sample and find out what is the biggest culprit (i.e. lag fix, flashing ROMs, amount of storage, etc.).
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I missed this post completely. People are having some MAJOR confirmation bias for WHY the i9000m dying.
Just because you do something, it doesn't always imply causation. There are plenty of vibrants around with dead SDs without ever installing lagfix or froyo. It's purely coincidence, because the SD was going to fail anyway.
Actually, I don't think there is enough evidence to come to any conclusion regardless.. But there is no evidence proving that the lagfix cannot be part of the problem, or no reliable proof. especially since nobody totally understands how the internal hardware works on this phone though. In fact, the "evidence" that wear leveling happens on the hardware controller is based solely on the sentence "computer SSD's do it that way" (ie, no evidence). And a lot of other evidence related to other problems i'm seeing is also based on assumption.
1) First isolate if the problem is faulty hardware or simply a formatting issue..
2) Work out what ROM's and such people were using
3) Work out if they were using a lagfix.
4) CONFIRM that the internal SD is actually dead. Many people here jump to conclusions too quickly.
5) Also, work out if there is an easy way to get "batch numbers".. Maybe it's isolated to a specific hardware batch.
i was on official jh2 rom from bell w/ voodoo lagfix. Never attempted flashing another rom. I noticed one time it crashed so i pulled the battery for an hour and that had fixed the issue (or so i thought). Was working for about a day and it crashed again. Out of desperation i tried flashing other roms like froyo. So the way i see it, its either general faulty hardware or the lagfix...not flashing froyo builds.
My i9000M had never crashed until soon after installing the JPK firmware, and in my case one crash was enough to "break" the SD Card. Again though, the fact it only crashed when I installed Froyo does not mean this was the cause.
Hopefully we can figure it out, because between the 3-button recovery mode issue and this, I'm considering getting another Android device instead.
I have a bell i9000m and I have not had this issue yet. Just curious for people who have. Did your phones have the three button issue as well?
Sent from my GT-I9000M using XDA App
I started thinking the same thing actually. Mine did have the 3 button recovery issue as well, and of course I had patched it (using the official Samsung Canada JH2 re-release).
MaestroSeven said:
I have a bell i9000m and I have not had this issue yet. Just curious for people who have. Did your phones have the three button issue as well?
Sent from my GT-I9000M using XDA App
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3 button was working on mine. But I have seen reports on here from people with the same issue where 3 button was not working..
Sent from my GT-I9000M using XDA App
3 button was also working on mine. Like the others, JPK booted correctly but I was getting force errors due to me upgrading from Eclair. Then I decided to wipe/factory reset and it was a no go from then on.
I hope we can figure this out. There has to be a way to get to the internal SDCard and repair it properly.
I have the T-Mobile US Vibrant and I noticed some weird problems with my internal storage too. I have only rooted and lagfixed my phone. I noticed it was taking longer and longer to open photos in my gallery and sometimes they don't open at all. Sometimes the phone will not mount as a storage device on my laptop. In the past 4 days, my phone has crashed hard twice. The first time I had to boot into recovery and wipe personal data and download all my apps and set my email accounts again. This morning my phone lost all the contacts from Facebook, Touchdown (Exchange) and Gmail.
This JUST happened to me like, 5 minutes ago. I browse these forums every day and I had never seen any warnings with regards to Froyo screwing up internal sd cards. It seems many of these cases are Froyo related. Now I probably have to take my phone back.
Hi guys.
I was wondering if changing roms and wipe often can be dangerous for our phone. I had an Htc Diamond 2 and i used to flash it often. I thought that, with the time, the system was more slow for this reason. What do you think? is it like the damage on hard disk when we formatting a pc?
it's like pc.
i thought pentium 1 was fast too.
ROM is designed to read and write, so i dont think flashing often would shorten the life compare to normal usage.
U might change phone before your internal storage dies on u. That's how solid it is.
Yeah it's like buying a memory stick and being scared to use it incase it breaks LOL
(I'll just keep it in the box and store it away)
You get something like 100,000 write cycles on NAND, no need to worry.
At least I think this is. I have recently moved from stock to Asylum's CM10.1 but did flash a known safe kernel before any wifing occurred so I do not think this is the standard EMMC bricking.
The onset of this was gradual - phone reboobed itself a couple of times (that I noticed) but this was no huge deal for me, then a few days later the screen digitizer stopped working and I had to take the battery out - from there it degenerated fairly rapidly with more reboobs, more often returning with the digitizer not functioning and finally it is at the point where it will not boot - stuck at the loading logo.
I can reboot into recovery (CWM 6.0.3.2) but can't do a lot there - fleshing a new ROM errors out saying the package is invalid or crashes (often with a brief flickering of the screen in either case).
I can run through hg42s partition scanner - if it completes it does so without report a problem otherwise it crashes, it's about 50/50 which although it seems more reliable if mains power is connected.
If I leave the phone in CWM it will eventually reboob itself after a few minutes.
I haven't seen any magic smoke escape.
I never experienced the EMMC brick so I don't know if it was progressive as this seems to be but I get the impression it was not - and I can't rule out the same sort of problem even if the original cause is different but at the moment I am unsure about the best way to progess - I will at some point pop over to Samsung's store but ideally I'd want to get to the bottom of this with the help of the community.
So any ideas? Does this sound like a corrupt partition somewhere? Thermal sensors triggering shutdowns when they shouldn't?
interesting, try to catch the evnts in the logs, use elixer/logcat/android tuner for that.
Check the battery dude.
I had similar problesm due to bad battery.
Phone was closing itslef. And before it closesi thescreen was turning crazy
Then no boot at all....
ardicli2000 said:
Check the battery dude.
I had similar problesm due to bad battery.
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Thanks. Did your problems occur even if the phone was on mains power? Does the battery have enough 'smart' features to affect the phone even if it is not required for powering the device?
JolyonS said:
Thanks. Did your problems occur even if the phone was on mains power? Does the battery have enough 'smart' features to affect the phone even if it is not required for powering the device?
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I was outside when faced such a big problem. It was happening before like reboobs and stucks on logo. But after i took out the battery for 15 min I was able to boot the phone.
However, eventually, one day phone got stuck with a flickering screen and then it never booted. Tired nandroid restore. Did not help. Changed kernels etc. It was no good either. Then I changed battery. Did not work again Then made a factory reset. It worked. Using it without any problem now. But even at that time I was able to see my files in the phone via Qadb. This could be your case as well.
Try changing battery if it is older than 9 months. Make a full pit fresh Stock install.
Then Reboot. I hope t will work
JolyonS said:
At least I think this is. I have recently moved from stock to Asylum's CM10.1 but did flash a known safe kernel before any wifing occurred so I do not think this is the standard EMMC bricking.
The onset of this was gradual - phone reboobed itself a couple of times (that I noticed) but this was no huge deal for me, then a few days later the screen digitizer stopped working and I had to take the battery out - from there it degenerated fairly rapidly with more reboobs, more often returning with the digitizer not functioning and finally it is at the point where it will not boot - stuck at the loading logo.
I can reboot into recovery (CWM 6.0.3.2) but can't do a lot there - fleshing a new ROM errors out saying the package is invalid or crashes (often with a brief flickering of the screen in either case).
I can run through hg42s partition scanner - if it completes it does so without report a problem otherwise it crashes, it's about 50/50 which although it seems more reliable if mains power is connected.
If I leave the phone in CWM it will eventually reboob itself after a few minutes.
I haven't seen any magic smoke escape.
I never experienced the EMMC brick so I don't know if it was progressive as this seems to be but I get the impression it was not - and I can't rule out the same sort of problem even if the original cause is different but at the moment I am unsure about the best way to progess - I will at some point pop over to Samsung's store but ideally I'd want to get to the bottom of this with the help of the community.
So any ideas? Does this sound like a corrupt partition somewhere? Thermal sensors triggering shutdowns when they shouldn't?
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Me too, i have some problem.
delete-
ardicli2000 said:
if it is older than 9 months.
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Yup. This was indeed the problem - new battery in and after a few repeats of the same behaviour it kicked into life and has been fine since.
Thank heavens for replaceable batteries.
JolyonS said:
Yup. This was indeed the problem - new battery in and after a few repeats of the same behaviour it kicked into life and has been fine since.
Thank heavens for replaceable batteries.
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Glad to hear that problem is solved
So I have one great Note 4 that runs fine. A second Note 4, given to me appearing to be a paper weight, has been with some effort rescusitated. But no, the eMMC errors have not gone totally.
This "bad" phone, however, is allowing me to fully exercise some of my curiosity. And in the process, no matter what happens, I hope I can get a few more answers about things. I know about the little app that keeps the phone from going to sleep and stablizes it... that works on the phone unless it gets turned off. And then the whole cycle of trying to start it again (the freezer trick, the holding of buttons, the pulling of the battery... sigh).
My latest gambit has been to go into TWRP and reformat /system /data and /cache (the only directories where I'm allowed to do so) to f2fs. In fact, just to really wipe this baby as clean as I possibly could, I reformatted them back to ext4, then back again to f2fs. I then installed a custom rom (the official CM 14.1). It appears to have installed over the top of the f2fs without trouble.
But of course I am freewheeling it here. I do not know very much about what is going on down inside there.
My questions:
1. What "hidden" directories are there that TWRP isn't showing me? Is there any possibility that if I could reformat them (and not destroy the phone) it might help with the eMMC errors? How would I do that if I in fact can?
2. When I reformat the directories from one format to another, am I actually wiping them or not? (I've read long pages about people suggesting that Android phones are terribly hard to actually wipe all data off.)
3. Is there any other possible cause for the eMMC errors than bad physical memory? I understand that bad memory chip *is* one obvious cause... but are there other causes that could in fact kick up an eMMC error that isn't really about the memory chip?
I'll post any other questions if and when I think of them. Worst happens, I mess this phone up so bad it won't reboot at all. I'm not too worried about that.
All thoughts welcome. I can experiment without caring too much.
I have read elsewhere that the problem could be caused by having a micro sd inserted in the phone.
Intensivefire said:
I have read elsewhere that the problem could be caused by having a micro sd inserted in the phone.
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Yes, I've read that also. Tried all sorts of experiments with and without micro-sd card inserted. Using a Wake Lock app from playstore (set on mid-range) allows the phone to do and be nicely. But shut it off and I have to freeze it for 5 min before it will restart. So... hopefully the Chinese mb card I bought today will actually work. Providing I can in fact open the phone without busting it. (There's some good clues on youtube which is nice.)
shonkin said:
Yes, I've read that also. Tried all sorts of experiments with and without micro-sd card inserted. Using a Wake Lock app from playstore (set on mid-range) allows the phone to do and be nicely. But shut it off and I have to freeze it for 5 min before it will restart. So... hopefully the Chinese mb card I bought today will actually work. Providing I can in fact open the phone without busting it. (There's some good clues on youtube which is nice.)
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emmc errors on note 4 is well known hardware failure , its time for you to replace emmc chip or system board
zfk110 said:
emmc errors on note 4 is well known hardware failure , its time for you to replace emmc chip or system board
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Yes, I said that in my first post. My point was that it is possible other causes for the error message just might exist. But all that is moot now... I did in fact order a new motherboard. But in the meantime, when I went to dissect the phone according to instructions on youtube, I found out too late that the author of said instructions was fairly clueless as far as a successful end result. The phone is dead, dead, dead. Lucky for me, it wasn't my main Note 4, which is just fine.
Here is a 100% hardware fix for this issue that anyone can do with no tools or specia
Here is a 100% hardware fix for this issue that anyone can do with no tools or special equipment.
It really works. Give it a try. ?
https://youtu.be/jLPHWtb0StI