Feel Free to Delete- No longer Needed , Reset on Accident.

[Broseph]

Deleted. Long story short, accidentally factory reset thinking it wouldnt delete my data and said F--k it. Never mind, appreciate all those who tried and gave their time to help , especially all your advice bc . Take it easy.

 

[ocnbrze]

you can make a nandroid backup.....pretty much bakup everything it asks for. the only problem it will backup the fact that you can't boot up into the os. so restoring the backup is not an option......how you pull out the data that you want is not something i have the experience with. but the data will be in in the nandroid backup......how to access that, i have no clue

 

[ocnbrze]

what data do you need?

 

[bcrichster]

Ok ok.. I THINK I have an idea. Try to pull an mmcblk0.img.. now unfortunately, it'll pull EVERY PARTITION from the WHOLE device and you'll have to unpack it with something like @SuperR 's Kitchen (I've actually successfully done this myself with some nougat 7.1 devices, so it might work for you. Now 1st off, download Samsung drivers from Samsung so that the PC recognizes it for what it really is, should make everything a bit easier as well. Now you have several kitchen options here, but the only one that works for Windows is the paid version ($20, I think..) but that one also works on ALL Windows, Mac, Linux systems and goes back to Android 4.0 Ice cream sandwich to now (Android 11). As for the free ones, they're all Linux and you'll either have to install that is somewhere on your PC, use someone's else's PC with Linux, or use one of the Mint/Ubuntu4Kitchen's to make a "liveboot USB". I recommend the Mint4Kitchen to ppl who're used to the general design of Windows, which has all drivers and pkgs are preinstalled.
Here's a link to make your choices. Personally? I prefer Mint4Kitchen myself and use Mint Cinnamon almost exclusively (less confusing, tbh). This method has been absolutely flawless for me so far, might just take some tinkering on where ya pull to (I would right-click on the desktop to open terminal, also inherently tells the PC WHERE ya put said file when done.. then use the kitchen to unpack it into different folders to peruse data.. I do apologize for forgetting about this method but it certainly works. Now, depending on the size of the mmcblk0.img vs the PC speed, just pulling or unpacking the .img can take quite a few minutes to an hr (phone storage is getting huge these days but yours shouldn't be too bad, honestly).. hope this is doable for ya. One last thing, when ya go to unpack the mmcblk0.img, you'll get some silly error that it can't find something (like build.props) but don't worry, it'll be 100% unpacked anyways, was just looking for something it normally sees in /System that it won't find in the the other 30+ partition folders. As for SMS/MMS (texts), you won't ever see them in this but the contacts will actually be in your Google account (if it was ever connected to a Google account to begin with). Hope this helps..

 

[bcrichster]

One last thing... Make sure TWRP is booted before doing the mmcblk0 pull

 

[Broseph]

Deleted

 

[bcrichster]

Data I need would be contacts, photos , and notes . I neglected to mention in the TWRP I do see a file explorer and have at the very least seemingly found where the photos are per your tip, is there anyway to send just easily these files to my computer somehow ? I could make the whole backups using either of the methods you two have specified as the entire phone is only about 4 gigs , however how do I instruct the phone to send the backup to my PC ( and then I'd need a find a way to explore within the backup nandroid or img correct ?) ? My Android was Jellybean 4 or something iirc. And I could potentially boot into the OS following a factory reset , it's just I haven't attempted that yet because I know that would wipe all my data (hence figuring out how to make this backup first) . I truly am a complete noob at this so I'm learning these terms as I go along , albeit I do appreciate your ideas and information.

Photos, you already have access to from TWRP, ya said. Just make sure TWRP is booted and connect to PC. Should give you an option popup on the PC for internal and/or external storage, you'll want to choose internal folder tho.. Notes would likely be somewhere in that Android folder, inside another folder the notes app made ( like.. Android/notes-something.com/data). As for contacts, it isn't in there. It'll be listed in the Google account, that can be accessed by a regular browser and sign into Google from there.. Androids have automatically uploaded contacts since near it's inception, so if you can't sign into the mentioned Google Dashboard account from your PC, this probably isn't your phone and I'm subsequently done advising you further. I have given you all the tools necessary to do what you've asked. Good luck and have a nice day.

 

[Broseph]

Deleted

 

[bcrichster]

There is no popup when connecting the phone and that's the entire problem , I can't see it in the computer as a storage device. This is with TWRP and connected to PC. I can see where the files are in the File Explorer within TWRP on the phone , but I need to know how to get them on my computer so I can attempt the factory reset as it's years worth and I don't want to lose the memories. Likewise with contacts there are some people who I don't have any other means of communicating with during this year especially and those I haven't seen a while. And its definitely my phone, when you make an e-mail years ago just to use the phone and it saves your password , it's not out of the question to forget it . When trying to recover my password the Google Dashboard won't let me sign in because said e-mail has only ever been used on my phone and I need to access it from there. Honestly if I was attempting something malicious like you are possibly implying, would I really be so clueless as to blindly be asking for help on public forums ? I don't know what to tell you. I don't want to lose years of life related stuff on my phone so I haven't factory reset it yet and haven't been able to call or text anyone for over a week now due to this predicament. If it's the case I can recover them after factory resetting that's a load off but I am just holding off on the factory reset until I can get my data for sure saved. Now the mystery is why isn't there a popup on my computer for the internal/external storage ?

Understandable Then try downloading Samsung's drivers for your device and reboot PC, that should give you at least MTP capability with the TWRP booted. It apparently thinks it's looking at an Alcatel and is having difficulty communicating properly. May even have to remove the Alcatel drivers but I really think the samsung version will give you priority.. Wait a second.. which version of Windows are you using? (Makes a ridiculous difference, actually) if you don't see anything pop-up on USB connection with TWRP booted, try looking at the drives on pc (C: , D: , E: , F: , etc) one of them has to be the device that's plugged in, hopefully you'll have better luck. I've always had existential problems outta windows so I rarely ever use it. Try that liveboot Mint4Kitchen USB thing I mentioned earlier cuz Linux doesn't ask for the drivers as near every driver is already installed in its massive kernel that runs the distro.. boot into that and as soon as you plug in the USB, should see what I've mentioned or actually a phone icon labeled Samsung, to go from there

 

[Broseph]

Deleted

 

[Brian706]

Sorry if I missed something, I only had time to skim these long walls of text...

In twrp have you gone to the "mount" menu then select "enable mtp"?

Apologies if that's not the exact wording but I haven't been in there in awhile and don't have twrp permanently installed to be able to check right now.

 

[Broseph]

Deleted

 

[mikedt]

Sorry if I missed something, I only had time to skim these long walls of text...

In twrp have you gone to the "mount" menu then select "enable mtp"?

Apologies if that's not the exact wording but I haven't been in there in awhile and don't have twrp permanently installed to be able to check right now.

That's what I thought.

Paragraphs are your friend, that's what I tell my students.