Please help! Any way to backup internal storage on a faulty phone?

[HackneyTiger]

Hi,

Please help! My girlfriends phone has died but it has pictures / SMS / MMS etc of our 4 month old baby and she's desperate to try and recover what we can from it...

I've copied the SD card which should take care of pics / vids. I've got 95% of her contacts from an old phone and some are backed up on her google account. It's the text / MMS messages I'm really struggling with...

The phone is a stock HTC Desire S on 3 UK network (S-ON, no-root, standard recovery img).


The short version...

Is there any way to extract files or backup the internal memory on a phone that won't boot? I can get into HBOOT / recovery but no further than that.

In particular it's the SMS/MMS messages which I believe are stored in a SQLlite db here;
/data/data/com.android.providers.telephony/databases/mmssms.db
/data/data/com.android.providers.telephony/app_parts/

What can you do using the "HBOOT USB plug" mode???
Any way to mount the internal memory so it's accessible from windows / linux?

Is there anything a professional phone shop will be able to do that I haven't already tried?

Any advice appreciated... I'm a professional software developer so get as techie as you want!



The long version...

The phone recently crashed and was just displaying a black screen - you could tell the back-light was still on though. It was completely unresponsive so we eventually had to pull the battery. When restarted it displayed the operator logo and then just went to the same black screen - it kept doing this for about a day.

Then it suddenly started working again for no apparent reason. I connected it to the laptop and took a full backup of everything that appeared on the USB drive (although I now realise this just shows the SD card and not the internal memory).

I also installed MyBackup (free version) but when I tried running it it was giving me an error about their server being unavailable or down for maintenance. I couldn't get it do anything while the server was down (surely I should still be able to a local backup to the SD card!).

The phone has now locked up again and despite many attempts I can't get it to successfully boot. Same symptoms as before.

I can get into HBOOT but when I go into recovery mode to see what the available options are I get some warnings like this;
E:Can't open /cache/recovery/command
E:Error in /data/data/recovery/log
(Read-only file system)
E:set_bootloader_message_block: emmc_read_data fail!

The usual recovery options then appear... Not sure whether any of them really help me in my situation though???

I googled the above errors and people seem to say they may indicate the internal memory is failing so I realise I may be fighting a losing battle here!

After lots of reading on the forums here's my problem..,
* It sounds like if I had a different recovery image installed then I might be able to backup the internal memory to the SD card.
* To install a new recovery image I need to S-OFF the phone though.
* That normal method of doing this on the HTC Desire S is to use Revolutionary but that requires me to turn "USB debugging" on.
* I can't turn USB debugging on as the phone won't boot!

Have I missed anything? Is there any way to install a better recovery image without booting the phone and changing settings?

Is there anything I can do via the stock HBOOT / recovery? What does "HBOOT USB plug" mode do?

Any advice appreciated...

Thanks

 

[jerofld]

This is a tricky one. I think the only hope you have is to install a custom recovery for the device. Check out your device subsection for more details: http://androidforums.com/desire-s-all-things-root/

Now if a custom recovery doesnt flash, i think youre hosed. But if it does, then i suggest making a backup of the system on to a sd card. Then you could do one of three things:

1) Get a new Desire S and get s off with it. Then flash the custom recovery and make a good back up. Then flash the backup from the bad desire and hope the thing boots.

2) Find and download a custom ROM and try flashing the new rom without wiping the data, just the dalvik and cache partitions. Then pray it boots.

3) Copy that back up made in option 1 and extract it onto a pc and try to sort out the mess.

Personally, i think option 2 has the best chance. Good luck!

 

[HackneyTiger]

Oh well, I tried flashing the recovery image but no luck...

C:\android-tools>fastboot flash recovery recovery.img
sending 'recovery' (4370 KB)... OKAY [ 0.790s]
writing 'recovery'... INFOsignature checking...
FAILED (remote: signature verify fail)
finished. total time: 1.540s