[FYI] Experiment - Restore Methods

OK, I am working on outlining the many ways to restore a Nook Color. I want to find the good and bad with different methods in an attempt to compile not just a flowchart style recovery thread, but to try and come up with a How-To for creating a personalized recovery sd for each user so you can come back from a fubar without having to do the many steps of restore to factory, root, reset, etc.

First experiment:
I loaded up CWR and created a nand backup of my working system as it sits right now. I purposely borked my boot partition so that I couldn't boot up. Then I created a 2gb bootable CWR, tossed in some recovery zips (one for stock 1.0.0 and one for stock 1.0.1)

1. Trying to restore my NC to stock 1.0.0 (which is what I had stable before purposely going off the deep end) didn't work. I would get boot loop at the "N" logo after "Touch the Future"
2. So i booted back to the Sd and restored to stock 1.0.1 --> Success
3. Completely registered NC with B&N
4. Rooted with autonooted 2.12.25 --> Sucess
5. Enabled market and installed ROM Manager --> Success
6. Flashed Clockwork Recovery --> Success
7. Powered OFF and back ON --> Success (and this step is so important I can not stress it enough)
8. Launched ROM Manager and booted into recovery --> success
9. Created a nand backup --> success
10. Restored my original nand backup (the 1.0.0 system I backed up before doing this) --> SUCCESS

So I was able to get back to where I started thanks to the bootable sd and some elbow grease. Next step is to try to compact this process and make it simpler. I'm open to some suggestions for what to try and how to make this more compact.

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UPDATE
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Background/Theory: I used Titanium Backup (Free) to do a 'Backup All User Apps + System data' from my 1.0.0 system. My intention was to use this to fully install all apps and their data onto a newly rooted 1.0.1 system. In case you were using 1.0.0 and wanted to take this system crash opportunity to upgrade to 1.0.1 - why not right?

1. Followed steps 1-9 above
2. Installed Titanium Backup from Market
3. Opened Titanium --> ran 'Batch: Restore all apps with data'
a. Had to tap 'Install' and 'Done' about 105 times as the apps were reinstalled
b. Quickoffice failed - but this is because I had the Adam version that requires the preinstalled viewer to be removed first and i forgot that step
c. ROM Manager Alert - this is because my batch was trying to install app data for an app that I already installed in step 5 above
4. Once complete did a full power off and on (in order to reset apps and lists and such)
5. Uh oh.... something sparked a B&N system failure and restore
6. Uh ok.... the restore was TOO fast and not complete - now i'm looking at the ZoomLogic setup
* It looks like I just completed the autonooter process and haven't done a Ti restore or anything
* Everything is hosed up now... now I NEED to restore using steps 1-10 above. Doh!

I don't know if Ti is not made to do what I tried to do, maybe I used the wrong batch options for backup and restore, or if this was an exception to what is otherwise a normal procedure. I would think that I could backup my apps in Ti on my 1.0.0 system and then restore all those apps on my new 1.0.1 system. I'll seek better Ti information - please post if you are real comfortable with using Ti as a "All Apps" backup and restore tool. I know I can do this one app at a time, but who the heck only has a few apps?

 

Second Experiment:
I want to simplify this process so I am trying to build a better recovery image. This time I added

1. Restored to B&N 1.0.1
2. Powered off at start of OOBE (so there is NO registration yet)
3. Inserted CWR bootable SD w/ nand
4. Booted to CWR recovery console
5. Wiped Cache / Dalvik cache (pretty sure this is unnecessary for this process - see below - but did anyway)
6. Format /data and /system partitions (again, pretty sure unnecessary)
7. restored nand backup (this is the wait 15 minute step where all the above cache and partitions are overwritten)
8. CWR likes to lock up once the backup completes, but it does complete
9. Hold power button about 10-12 seconds to force power down
10. Remove bootable sd and power on

Success!

I was able to do a nand restore of my 1.0.0 system and my 1.0.1 system regardless of what I had on the NC before starting the restore. This may be obvious to some old school pro's, but this experiment confirmed for me that a full nand restore will overwrite EVERYTHING (/boot, /data, /system, /cache) so it really is a pretty full-on recovery.

The catch? You have to have a good nand backup BEFORE you actually need it. So this part of the process is the insurance part... More to come.

 

reserved - for third experiment method

 

There are other places, but I will include every tiny detail I can when I have this worked out completely.

 

OK folks, I did a part 2 type thing in post 1 and a new experiment in post 2, please give me some feedback and/or suggestions. Thanks!

 

OK, so I have been playing with this process a lot... and am a bit stuck at this point in my work. I have been hampered by a bug that I can't identify that seems make my NC get an nasty "authorization problem, your device will restart to restore" and I end up with a half-rooted stock software nook. <-- sucks

So I am working on building up a new NC for myself that I can torture test into stable. Then begin (again) on working out the recovery/restore plans. I don't want to do that without knowing I am starting from a solid and stable position. I think for the sake of this project I will wipe the NC clean and just have a very base system. This way I can ensure none of my apps or settings are causing any disturbance to my experiment.

Thanks for the support so far, and I hope to have this complete by the end of the week.

 

Thanks, I will take your input for my next round.

 

I am not sure what you are asking exactly. Can you explain a bit more for me?

 

arus, your can pretty much fix anything at this point if you can power on. Rather than using the 8 boot method you create a bootable SD card and can then flash to any setup you want from stock to custom ROMs. It is pretty hard to brick a Nook beyond recovery.