Factory reset now deletes all your photos!!!

[truelove79]

GRRRRR!!! Because the Gnex has no SD card and the internal memory is just one partition, doing a factory reset wipes all your photos and music and anything else you've saved. On all previous Android phones (that has SD cards) doing a factory reset didn't touch any of your data files (photos, music, documents, etc.). That is kind of sucky!!

 

[pool_shark]

I read that it doesn't do that if you do a factory reset, unlike when unlocking the bootloader. I guess that person was wrong.

I've also read that if you factory reset using clockwork recovery it won't touch the sd card partition.

 

[ChiTownJim]

I've done over a dozen resets (everytime I flash a new rom) and it hasn't deleted any of my pics or music

 

[RichSz]

I don't know about a factory reset, but unlocking absolutely, 100% deletes EVERYTHING!

 

[Deleted User]

GRRRRR!!! Because the Gnex has no SD card and the internal memory is just one partition, doing a factory reset wipes all your photos and music and anything else you've saved. On all previous Android phones (that has SD cards) doing a factory reset didn't touch any of your data files (photos, music, documents, etc.). That is kind of sucky!!

This is not correct.

Nobody would be able to ROM their phone if this were the case, because the ROM is stored on the SD card.

I am sorry that whatever you did to your phone wiped your sdcard, but making incorrect thread titles is just going to mislead other people. If you'd like to post up what you did, we might be able to help figure out why it happened.

Having the partition on the internal memory does not, IN ANY WAY, prevent the phone from leaving the SD card intact during a factory reset. Partitions are individually wiped, it doesn't just issue a "delete everything" command to the memory chip.

 

[rmrlc]

setting/backup & reset/Factory data reset

 

[Shockwave78]

dunno but if its anything important i would obviously save it before doing a factory reset, i expect that it would delete everything..Thats why i want it to do a factory reset in the first place.

 

[chamjin]

Yup. I can confirm, it will indeed wipe out all data.

 

[Mr. Orange 645]

Factory reset through CWM will NOT delete the virtual SD card contents...however, a factory reset through security settings deletes EVERYTHING.

 

[syntrix]

Yup. I can confirm, it will indeed wipe out all data.

Exactly, which is why I use adb command line to backup the `sdcard` partition.

You can't just copy it in windows, I always get errors and it aborts, adb is the way to go!

Also since you don't have a drive letter, you can't rsync in windows, or use any other "sync" tool that I have found to actually copy 100% of the storage.

 

[Deleted User]

Bwahaha... I thought I was in the root forum, and thus assumed he was referring to CWM. Whoops - but really, it says what it will delete. I'm not quite sure why it's noteworthy.

Frankly, I'm guessing it's there to protect users from thinking they deleted all of their personal data when doing a factory reset. There is nothing whatsoever that prevents Google from doing a factory reset but leaving the /sdcard partition intact.

 

[pool_shark]

Exactly, which is why I use adb command line to backup the `sdcard` partition.

You can't just copy it in windows, I always get errors and it aborts, adb is the way to go!

Also since you don't have a drive letter, you can't rsync in windows, or use any other "sync" tool that I have found to actually copy 100% of the storage.

I've copied the contents of mine back and forth several times using windows.

 

[syntrix]

I've copied the contents of mine back and forth several times using windows.

Yeah, I kept getting fail, hence the other method.... even from day one... copying to the phone... then trying to copy back to the computer.

Glad drop and go is working for you!

 

[truelove79]

For those of you who don't believe me for some reason, I didn't post this to start a debate or to ask a question. I posted this to tell you that this is what it does. The nexus does not have an sd card contrary to what at least 1 person said in this thread. The internal memory is 1 partition and a factory reset formats the entire partition. You will lose your photos your music and anything else stored in internal memory. The phone warns you of this before you do the factory reset. This is in stark contrast to what android phones have done in the past. Previous android phones have always had an sd card which did not get touched when you get a factory reset. Don't get me wrong, I love the nexus! But this is just a little bit of a pain in the butt when you have to do a factory reset.

 

[diablo1313]

Or you could just backup your phone to your computer.

 

[truelove79]

Or you could just backup your phone to your computer.

transferring files to and from the nexus is kind of a pain in the butt as most people have come to find out. You're better off sinking to the cloud using either google services or something like dropbox.

 

[Mr. Poppalopolis]

For those of you who don't believe me for some reason, I didn't post this to start a debate or to ask a question. I posted this to tell you that this is what it does. The nexus does not have an sd card contrary to what at least 1 person said in this thread. The internal memory is 1 partition and a factory reset formats the entire partition. You will lose your photos your music and anything else stored in internal memory. The phone warns you of this before you do the factory reset. This is in stark contrast to what android phones have done in the past. Previous android phones have always had an sd card which did not get touched when you get a factory reset. Don't get me wrong, I love the nexus! But this is just a little bit of a pain in the butt when you have to do a factory reset.

That is not true. The internal memory IS divided into several partitions, one being the /sdcard partition. The software chooses to format this, but other methods of resetting (CWM Recovery) do NOT format /sdcard. Point is that even though it's all internal flash memory, the sdcard partition is treated separately from the other partitions.

More on topic though you are totally right about it formatting the sdcard partition. Maybe Google was concerned about people selling or returning phones and leaving personal data on them. On Android 2.x you would need to format the sdcard manually which many people forgot to do or did not even think about. I'm willing to bet that phones with ICS and SD card slots will also have /sdcard formatted when resetting.

 

[jkc120]

For those of you who don't believe me for some reason, I didn't post this to start a debate or to ask a question. I posted this to tell you that this is what it does. The nexus does not have an sd card contrary to what at least 1 person said in this thread. The internal memory is 1 partition and a factory reset formats the entire partition. You will lose your photos your music and anything else stored in internal memory. The phone warns you of this before you do the factory reset. This is in stark contrast to what android phones have done in the past. Previous android phones have always had an sd card which did not get touched when you get a factory reset. Don't get me wrong, I love the nexus! But this is just a little bit of a pain in the butt when you have to do a factory reset.

Interesting. I just noticed the sdcard is mounted as type fuse:

mount
rootfs / rootfs ro,relatime 0 0
tmpfs /dev tmpfs rw,nosuid,relatime,mode=755 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts rw,relatime,mode=600 0 0
proc /proc proc rw,relatime 0 0
sysfs /sys sysfs rw,relatime 0 0
none /acct cgroup rw,relatime,cpuacct 0 0
tmpfs /mnt/asec tmpfs rw,relatime,mode=755,gid=1000 0 0
tmpfs /mnt/obb tmpfs rw,relatime,mode=755,gid=1000 0 0
none /dev/cpuctl cgroup rw,relatime,cpu 0 0
/dev/block/platform/omap/omap_hsmmc.0/by-name/system /system ext4 ro,relatime,barrier=1,data=ordered 0 0
/dev/block/platform/omap/omap_hsmmc.0/by-name/userdata /data ext4 rw,nosuid,nodev,noatime,errors=panic,barrier=1,nomblk_io_submit,data=ordered 0 0
/dev/block/platform/omap/omap_hsmmc.0/by-name/cache /cache ext4 rw,nosuid,nodev,noatime,errors=panic,barrier=1,nomblk_io_submit,data=ordered 0 0
/dev/block/platform/omap/omap_hsmmc.0/by-name/efs /factory ext4 ro,relatime,barrier=1,data=ordered 0 0
/sys/kernel/debug /sys/kernel/debug debugfs rw,relatime 0 0
/dev/fuse /mnt/sdcard fuse rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,user_id=1023,group_id=1023,default_permissions,allow_other 0 0

So they are doing this to share the flash and avoid the dreaded running out of space thing. So you are absolutely correct that they SHARE the partition. In fact, found this linked on a reddit post.

So basically, custom recoveries like CWM and Amon Ra are smart enough to avoid wiping the 'sdcard', but the factory reset probably does this on purpose as others pointed out so people don't accidentally wind up with someone else's personal info!

Thank you for posting this, hopefully you save some people some lost data!

 

[jkc120]

That is not true. The internal memory IS divided into several partitions, one being the /sdcard partition.

No, it actually does reside on the same partition. They use fuse to make it appear as a separate mount point.

 

[ANewDay]

Does unlocking the bootloader wipe out everything, including /sdcard ?

 

[jkc120]

Does unlocking the bootloader wipe out everything, including /sdcard ?

Yes it does.

 

[Dubbin1]

I am sorry that whatever you did to your phone wiped your sdcard, but making incorrect thread titles is just going to mislead other people. If you'd like to post up what you did, we might be able to help figure out why it happened.

Doing a reset wiped everything out on mine so I wouldn't say he is misleading anyone.

 

[zoukis05]

Doing a reset wiped everything out on mine so I wouldn't say he is misleading anyone.

You're right he's not misleading anyone. Doing a factory reset from within the settings WILL delete everything on your phone. However as other have said, there are other ways (CWM) to format the phone and keep the data that is on the /sd portion of the Nexus.

 

[jkc120]

You're right he's not misleading anyone. Doing a factory reset from within the settings WILL delete everything on your phone. However as other have said, there are other ways (CWM) to format the phone and keep the data that is on the /sd portion of the Nexus.

The ironic thing being of course in order to run CWM, you have to unlock the bootloader. And doing that wipes the phone

 

[AntimonyER]

I hope Verizon CSRs know this about this phone. Most other phones won't wipe this data with a factory reset, I can see a lot of people losing pictures/music when they call in and are told to reset the phone as a last resort for problems...

It also makes me glad I unlocked the phone right away.