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Root SD Card Wiped - Advice Please!

cggorman

Android Enthusiast
Mar 25, 2010
676
664
I just went to install a new ROM and started formatting. Did Boot, system, and data, then went to do cache and accidentally selected sdcard. damn. I got a shell of a phone now.

Other than my recent pics, I'm not concerned about any loss other than the licenses for ROM Manager Premium, Titatium Premium, etc. Am I screwed? Need to re-purchase?
 
I really didn't think about it but I'm pretty sure it will. Checking now....

This is the #1 recommended app on the link I posted.

"Recuva can recover files from hard drives, USB drives, memory cards, and even MP3 players, including the iPod."

Well the reason I say that is because if you delete files, it just removes the indexing references to the location of the data on the drive. So all the 1s and 0s are still there on the disk, they just aren't labeled any more and can be overwritten. If that was the case then yes the files can easily be retrieved.

If a drive is actually formatted and wiped of data, magnetic hard drives can still have some faint traces of those 1s and 0s but I don't think a solid state drive will.

I reserve the right to be completely wrong though. Hopefully I am for the sake of the OP.
 
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Well the reason I say that is because if you delete files, it just removes the indexing references to the location of the data on the drive. So all the 1s and 0s are still there on the disk, they just aren't labeled any more and can be overwritten. If that was the case then yes the files can easily be retrieved.

If a drive is actually formatted and wiped of data, magnetic hard drives can still have some faint traces of those 1s and 0s but I don't think a solid state drive will.

I reserve the right to be completely wrong though. Hopefully I am for the sake of the OP.

Yeah, I see what you're saying and I honestly don't know how recoverable his data is. Here's hoping that the "format" doesn't do a very good job (after all, I format each partition at least twice when I load a new ROM and I know that many more do this as well :D)
 
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Thanks for the tips. Back up to 80% functional. Still need to dig up my titanium license email and reload my movies and pics. I didn't even try recovery. Formatted a flash card. Not gonna be crap left recover (IMO).

AS someone who specializes in saving people's data when I fix their PC's and everything related, I can say this...

If the flash card has only been formatted once, and not written over, there is an 80% chance that a program such as EASUS could recover your files 100%-with filenames intact. Especially since AFAIK the Droid only does a "quick" format, not a "zero" of all the memory blocks on the card.

I have been there and done this several times, my most popular case being for a local pro photographer who accidentally formatted a whole session's work from his camera's SD card. He was quite relieved when I brought all 80 or so pictures back.
 
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I know it is a little late for this but for future reference you can back up your entire SD card to your PC using the command:

adb pull /sdcard c:\whatever_directory_you_want

This has saved me a few times (especially my photos and music). I do a PC backup every couple of weeks. You can accomplish the same thing using windows copy and paste commands but when dealing with 1000's of MP3 files I have found the adb method more reliable.
 
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All my paid apps except TiBU were restored perfectly thru the market. I emailed the dev of TiBU and explained my situation. He emailed back the key file within 12 hours. AMAZING customer service. Five stars.

Still need to re-do my movies and music and pull a few games from the market, but that's minor. In the end, this turned out to be little more than inconvenience. I can't stree enough the value of having clockwork on the phone. I suspect it greatly simplified the process of resurrecting the phone as I was able to mount the SD card and transfer the ROMs and Kernels from my desktop. The rest was cake.

I did have one question, though...When I first started the restore process, I thought I would have to use RSD Lite and flash a whole new 2.0.1 image, but for some reason, RSD wouldn't recognize the phone. I tested it before and all the drivers are present and I obtained root the hard way. Is this a situation where the partial functionality of the phone interferred with RSD's ability to sync with the phone or is it user error?
 
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All my paid apps except TiBU were restored perfectly thru the market. I emailed the dev of TiBU and explained my situation. He emailed back the key file within 12 hours. AMAZING customer service. Five stars.

Still need to re-do my movies and music and pull a few games from the market, but that's minor. In the end, this turned out to be little more than inconvenience. I can't stree enough the value of having clockwork on the phone. I suspect it greatly simplified the process of resurrecting the phone as I was able to mount the SD card and transfer the ROMs and Kernels from my desktop. The rest was cake.

I did have one question, though...When I first started the restore process, I thought I would have to use RSD Lite and flash a whole new 2.0.1 image, but for some reason, RSD wouldn't recognize the phone. I tested it before and all the drivers are present and I obtained root the hard way. Is this a situation where the partial functionality of the phone interferred with RSD's ability to sync with the phone or is it user error?

I would say user error because having partial functionality (or zero functionality) is where Flashing the SBF file is actually needed. I'm not sure why it didn't work for you but I'm kind of glad it failed...As you probably know now, you didn't need to flash the SBF even though your phone partitions and sdcard were all wiped. Side-loading files from your PC is a necessary part of the recovery image in the first place. Your phone wasn't "bricked"...just wiped clean but you had a fully working recovery image. You could have downloaded any ROM (stock or rooted ROM) and transfered it over to your phone to get you back to a working state.

My biggest concern for you was recovering any pictures or video you took so you didn't lose those. :D
 
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