Can't Wipe SD Card!!

[Hypo Luxa]

This is driving me insane! I cannot seem to get rid of the rom on my phone! I go into the nand and wipe the system, dalvik cache, and ext, yet I can't seem to completely wipe everything! I even went in and removed the partition, then repartitioned the SD card and it came back up into my rom with all my settings intact. Of course the file system was empty when I mounted it to my PC.

I recently tried to blow away the partition and redo it and did all three wipes after and reboot, apparently I missed volume and it installed the xtrrom zip all by itself, despite the fact that partitioning the SD Card should have gotten rid of that.. so after I set it all up, mounted it, and went into the file system, I have one directory called LOST.DIR and nothing else.

What teh hell is going on here?

 

[Podivin]

It's possible I"m missing something, and smarter brains than mine will jump in here and correct me.
However, as near as I can tell all you've done is the equivalent of a factory data reset by doing the wipes in recovery. But that's not going to take you back to a stock phone, once you flash a ROM, for all intents and purposes that becomes the 'factory' setting on the phone. Doing the wipes will clear your data, but the ROM is going to be there until you replace it with another one.

 

[doogald]

It's possible I"m missing something, and smarter brains than mine will jump in here and correct me.
However, as near as I can tell all you've done is the equivalent of a factory data reset by doing the wipes in recovery. But that's not going to take you back to a stock phone, once you flash a ROM, for all intents and purposes that becomes the 'factory' setting on the phone. Doing the wipes will clear your data, but the ROM is going to be there until you replace it with another one.

This is correct. If you want a different ROM, after the wipes you need to flash that ROM. Wiping will not remove the ROM; it just removes your apps, data, settings, account login, etc. You will still have whichever ROM you flashed.

 

[Hypo Luxa]

This is correct. If you want a different ROM, after the wipes you need to flash that ROM. Wiping will not remove the ROM; it just removes your apps, data, settings, account login, etc. You will still have whichever ROM you flashed.

However, re partitioning should have removed the data. Partitioning is always destructive... hence my complete confusion

 

[erisuser1]

However, re partitioning should have removed the data. Partitioning is always destructive... hence my complete confusion

You are not partitioning system flash memory - the "partitioning" that is being performed by the Amon_RA menu system is for the SD card ONLY.

Hence the results you obtained.


One thing which seems to be poorly understood by the Amon_RA user base is that the "Wipe data/factory reset" option does NOT REMOVE anything in the "boot" or "system" partitions.

So, despite all that "wiping", the ROM is still installed on your phone - as doogald pointed out.


eu1

 

[Podivin]

So, despite all that "wiping", the ROM is still installed on your phone - as doogald pointed out.


eu1

Hey, I pointed it out too!
Aw man, you're still mad at me 'cause I contradicted you the other day...

 

[doogald]

However, re partitioning should have removed the data. Partitioning is always destructive... hence my complete confusion

To add to EU1's post, you did wipe the data on your SD card. However, your apps and their data are not stored on SD (for the most part; photos that you take are stored on SD, for example.) Almost every app has an area on the internal memory of your phone, and not on SD, where it stores settings, cache, data, etc.

 

[Hypo Luxa]

You are not partitioning system flash memory - the "partitioning" that is being performed by the Amon_RA menu system is for the SD card ONLY.

Hence the results you obtained.


One thing which seems to be poorly understood by the Amon_RA user base is that the "Wipe data/factory reset" option does NOT REMOVE anything in the "boot" or "system" partitions.

So, despite all that "wiping", the ROM is still installed on your phone - as doogald pointed out.


eu1

I know that partitioning takes place on teh SD Card, however, I was not aware that performing a wipe of the system did not wipe the system files. I guess the confusion is largely due to how that option is labeled.

So when you preform a system wipe, what is affected? User settings/data not stored on the SD?

 

[erisuser1]

I know that partitioning takes place on teh SD Card, however, I was not aware that performing a wipe of the system did not wipe the system files. I guess the confusion is largely due to how that option is labeled.

So when you preform a system wipe, what is affected? User settings/data not stored on the SD?

When you perform (in Amon_RA) a "Wipe data/factory reset", the data and cache partitions are erased. The data partition contains a bunch of stuff, including all application settings, and usually application data too - depending on the app design.

Applications have the freedom to write stuff to the SD card, but generally only do that if their "data" tends to be large (music files, photos, ringtones, large databases). Usually 100% of the application "settings" are stored in the Eris' system flash memory (not the SD card).

There are 6 "official" partitions in the Eris' (system) flash memory: recovery, boot, system, data, cache, and misc. (In addition there is 43 Mb of "unaccounted for" flash memory which probably contains the bootloader (0.5 Mb), radio firmware (16Mb), and other mysteries)

The version of Amon_RA that is on the Eris:

- when performing a "Wipe data/factory reset" only cleans these two: data and cache
- when performing a Nand backup, only copies these: boot, system, and data.
- when performing a Nand+ext backup, only copies these: boot, system, data, and (SD card) ext


boot: contains the kernel and a small number of files including initialization scripts
system: contains all the pre-installed apps plus all the native code and libraries for the ROM
data: contains application data and settings, Dalvik-cache, and other system support

A ROM developer has the flexibility to install files to the recovery, boot, system, data, cache, misc, radio, and even the SD card; but typically they only write files into the system partition.

Every time Android boots, it does some housekeeping to make sure that there are folders set up in /data, and unique accounts assigned to every app, and so forth - so if the "data" partition happens to be wiped clean, it will set up the right stuff in there so that when the apps run, they will each have their own private areas in there to store application settings and private or shared data. It also builds up the "Dalvik cache", which is also in the /data partition. That's why the first time you boot Android after a factory reset, or a "wipe + ROM install", it takes longer to boot than subsequent times - and also explains why applications get reset back to their default settings.


Long explanation; I hope it helps


eu1

 

[Hypo Luxa]

AAAHHH... Ok, actually it makes complete sense now! Thanks!