S3 Storage (Data Loss Recovery / Prevention / Info)
This thread is intended to give you an overview of some of the Storage of the S3 from a Data Loss and recovery perspective. It is not intended to cover USB sticks or mods to Swap / Mount other storage. It is solely to cover day-to-day data concerns and give a background to how these things work
Please note, if you have recently swapped between Android 4.1 and 4.2 and cannot find your sdcard data, you need to read [Info] Flashed 4.2? Can't find your /sdcard data?
![]()
Before we get started...
Here are a couple of threads you should get familiar with before posting on XDA.
Forum Rules - use Search before posting
Post Questions or Support queries in Q&A, NOT General
![]()
Backround of Android storage (Pre-S3)
Firstly, I think we need to understand how Android worked historically as this will help us to understand how the S3 works now.
A legacy android device, lets pretend the HTC desire on Android 2.2 as this was a standard configuration at the time. It had 2 major partitions (and several minor ones which are irrelevant to this topic). It has the /system partition and the /data partition. These were partitions of the internal NAND flash memory.
/system is where the Android operating system lives. The user could not delete or change anything in here (unless you were rooted). All the software that came with the phone was installed in the /system partition
/data is where all the userdata goes. Whenever you installed an app from the market, it installed to /data/app and it put all it's important data into /data/data. Also any system settings you changed (Wallpaper, ringtones etc) all were stored in /data/data. When you did a factory reset, it wiped /data and everything in it.
Of course, having these 2 partitions was not enough for everyday use. There was no where to store your music, photos, documents etc. /data is just for app data and settings. So this is where /sdcard comes in
/sdcard is the Android mount point for the External SD card in this legacy android device. This means that when you inserted a Micro SD card, Android used /sdcard as it's internal reference to where the card's storage is. The /sdcard was a necessity before you could take photos. Over time, bigger apps started to put other data here. For example, a GPS / Map application would store its apk (application package) in /data/app and store your personal configuration settings in /data/data but it may download and store offline maps somewhere on the /sdcard. In older devices, the internal Memory (NAND Flash) was usually too small to allow much data on it. Many users would have to root to get more storage space or keep uninstalling apps to keep the "low on space" warnings at bay
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How the S3 is different
Well, the S3 is substantially different. There are of course SOME similarities. For example, the S3 still has internal NAND Flash Memory. This is often referred to as the eMMC (Embedded MultiMedia Card) - which still contains the /system and /data partitions, used in exactly the same way.
The main difference is /sdcard. The S3 is designed specifically so using an external micro sd card is NOT a necessity. It has a larger NAND Flash internal memory (eMMC) so it can also have an "internal SD card". This is where people start to get confused. The entire internal memory is an eMMC which is essentially an internal SD card, however a partition of that internal memory is /sdcard.
OK, I know - let me explain. /sdcard is a mount point that Android uses to know where to store /sdcard data. But on the S3, instead of storing it on a required external sd card, it points to an internal memory partition. Now here is the clever bit. The /sdcard actually points to /data/media (or /data/media/0 in Android 4.2 onwards). So you continue to have your /data partition, but within /data you have:
The clever thing is that the file system that android uses for /system and /data is a Linux file system called Extended FS. In our case, we use the Ext 4 file system. This is important to understand because these file systems do not work with Windows so an external SD card would usually be Fat 32 file system, or exFAT so we could plug it into our windows computers and read the contents. What Samsung have had to do is use the FUSE file system to allow /sdcard (or /data/media) to exist as a FAT file system within the EXT 4 file system. Clever stuff. But it has it's pro's and cons...
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You lost me at file system
All electronic systems that have an operating system and store data use a file system. Think of it in it's simplest form. Imagine a school text book. It has lots of chapters about different things. It has a "Table of Contents" in the first few pages, telling you where each chapter in the book is so if you want to know what page chapter 13 is on, you look in the contents and find the page and go straight there - The alternative is looking through each page individually to find the chapter. Not a quick process.
Well data storage works the same. When you put a file on a hard drive, sdcard, USB stick (or whatever) it is written to a specific location. When it is written to this location, the location is added to the file system. So when you put word.doc onto the drive, The file system is informed of the (very complicated) location of the file. When you tell Windows, Android (or whatever) that you want to open word.doc, the operating system consults the File system and goes to retrieve the data from its true and real (yet very complicated) location on the drive.
There are many file system types still in use today. Usually they are operating system specific. For example, Ext 4 is a Linux file system (and Android by Proxy as it is Linux kernel based) and Windows cannot read Ext file systems. Similarly, exFAT is a Microsoft file system (also used for sdcards on the S3) and cannot be used (easily) on Linux machines. Since most everyday users of the S3 are Windows users, you can see now hopefully why it was important for Sasmung to use "magic" and implement FUSE to allow an exFAT file system to be used for /sdcard, within the Ext 4 partition of /data
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Did I REALLY need to know ALL that?
You know what? Probably not but it may go some way to help understand the limitations we will cover later on.
![]()
A bit more info for the S3
Obviously, the internal memory supplied with the S3 may not be enough for all users so they added the ability to add expanded memory in the form of the Micro SD card. Android uses the Mount point of /extSdCard now, instead of /sdcard like it used for legacy devices - because /sdcard is already in use elsewhere.
One thing many of you have probably noticed is that with the S3, there is no option to mount the /sdcard or /extSdCard as USB Mass storage on your computer. You must use MTP or PTP.
PTP - Photo Transfer Protocol. When you connect your S3 to your computer using PTP, Your computer sees it as a camera. It will show photos on your "camera" and will set about implementing the default camera options (such as suggesting you import your photos) etc. It won't show documents or other media necessarily.
MTP - Media Transfer Protocol. When you connect your S3 to your computer, it will be seen as a media player. This should allow you full access to all the files on there, including word documents and the such like.
One of the reasons for this is that because /sdcard points to something using the FUSE file system and is not a true partition, it would be difficult to allow it to be used as USB Mass Storage. It may or may not be possible but the biggest advantage of using MTP / PTP is that the computer and the S3 can both access the internal memory at the same time. With USB Mass Storage (UMS) this is quite awkward and can result in errors.
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Deleting data
This is partially why we needed to understand a little about file systems. So I could explain to you how data is handled when it is deleted.
As I explained earlier, when you write a file to memory, a corresponding entry is written to the file system to advise the OS where the data is. Sure, you may think you are writing the file to /sdcard/documents/work directory on the internal memory, but in reality these directories or folders do not actually exist at a memory hardware level. The data is written to a block and the file system is informed where that block is, how big the file is, what directory it should appear in to the OS etc. When a file is written the memory, the OS see's the available space go down and the used space go up. All this information comes from the file system.
When you delete the file, the actual data is NOT deleted. It remains where it is on the memory. The block is not overwritten. When the OS is told by the user to delete the file, the File system entry is deleted. This changes the free/used space as the file system is no longer accounting for the data, however the truth is the data still exists. When the next request to write a file to the memory comes from the OS, the file system will think the block where the old data was is empty and will overwrite it.
It is this difference between the file system and reality that allows data to be recovered by external software. if you do not write any data to the memory, external software can scan the memory for data whilst bypassing the file system all together. Ff course the window is small. You only have a very limited time to recover data before the file system allows the data to be overwritten with a new entry.
This is not just true of a deleted file. Even formatting the memory (which is actually just re-creating a new, blank file system) leaves all the data in tact behind-the-scenes and can all still be recovered until you start writing data to the memory. Cool huh?
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Wow, all this time I've been stressing, is it really that simple?
Awwww snap! You got me. No it is not that simple. All this PC software, example: Piriform recuva only works on a computer drive. In windows, imagine this is anything with a Drive Letter. C: drive etc.
The only way to get a drive letter on your sdcard is to use USB Mass Storage mode, which as previously discussed - is not possible on your S3 (unless you are rooted, you can mount USB mass storage in custom recovery or use a UMS app from Play). The alternative is to use a card reader on your PC and put the sdcard in it.
There are also apps like Undelete for root users - which again, you guessed it - requires root. So if you're not rooted, it's simplest to use a card reader which can be bought for peanuts.
It's worth mentioning, NONE OF THE ABOVE will work with /sdcard on internal memory. It is not possible to get your data back once deleted from internal memory. Once gone, it's gone forever. You can only restore from /extSdCard (removable, external SDcard)
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Phone won't boot, can I get my data back from internal memory?
Let's start by saying, it depends why your phone won't boot. If it's an SDS (Sudden Death Syndrome) type issue, where your internal eMMC (NAND FLash memory) has failed, then no. However, if you believe this is not the case then you can get your /sdcard data using adb BUT you need a custom recovery to be flashed via Odin before you do this. Read [REF] Understanding the basics before rooting your S3
However, if out of curiosity - you do still want to get your data off, using adb , read below:
![]()
Data corruption
When data becomes corrupt, there's really not a lot you can do. The file system knows where the data is already. If it's corrupt, you're stuck. Most common causes of corruption are:
1) Dirty unmount of /sdcard. SD card pulled out whilst it is being written to / phone shuts off whilst being written to. SOMETIMES - Plugging the card into a card reader in windows, Windows will ask to fix it and MAY fix it.
2) Fake SD card. This is really the MOST common. Get a card reader ans use:
h2testw.exe for windows to test your card in a card reader. Set it to read the full size of the card, which will take hours but well worth it.
If you get a result like this:
...Then you have a fake card, that is really 4 GB. I'll explain this.
Commonly, fake cards are reprogrammed to "think" they are high capacity cards, such as 32 GB or 64 GB to defraud buyers out of money. This is common on eBay (Never buy cards from eBay).
When these cards are formatted, the file system also thinks it is this fake capacity. Normally, when a card is full, the file system will report to the OS there is no more space and this prevents additional writes to the card. However, in the case where the card is 4GB and the File system thinks it is 64 GB, the tricked file system doesn't know the card is full. The file system keeps allowing data to be written to the card, over writing the existing data but without replacing the file system entries. The file system thinks data that has been overwritten hasn't been overwritten so when you try to open one of these files, it is essentially "corrupt" or non-existent.
![]()
Preventing data loss
Time to wise up guys. It is possible to recover data off your removable media, but internal memory - very unlikely. No apps on your PC or Android will help with deleted data. So you need to backup.
Dropbox - Use dropbox to automatically upload your photos to online storage.
Foldersync - Use FolderSync to upload important sdcard files to your dropbox account, or better yet - got a computer thats always on at home? Set foldersync to schedule a sync over wifi whilst you're asleep.
![]()
Other info
Interesting tidbits
This thread is intended to give you an overview of some of the Storage of the S3 from a Data Loss and recovery perspective. It is not intended to cover USB sticks or mods to Swap / Mount other storage. It is solely to cover day-to-day data concerns and give a background to how these things work
Please note, if you have recently swapped between Android 4.1 and 4.2 and cannot find your sdcard data, you need to read [Info] Flashed 4.2? Can't find your /sdcard data?
Before we get started...
Here are a couple of threads you should get familiar with before posting on XDA.
Forum Rules - use Search before posting
Post Questions or Support queries in Q&A, NOT General
Backround of Android storage (Pre-S3)
Firstly, I think we need to understand how Android worked historically as this will help us to understand how the S3 works now.
A legacy android device, lets pretend the HTC desire on Android 2.2 as this was a standard configuration at the time. It had 2 major partitions (and several minor ones which are irrelevant to this topic). It has the /system partition and the /data partition. These were partitions of the internal NAND flash memory.
/system is where the Android operating system lives. The user could not delete or change anything in here (unless you were rooted). All the software that came with the phone was installed in the /system partition
/data is where all the userdata goes. Whenever you installed an app from the market, it installed to /data/app and it put all it's important data into /data/data. Also any system settings you changed (Wallpaper, ringtones etc) all were stored in /data/data. When you did a factory reset, it wiped /data and everything in it.
Of course, having these 2 partitions was not enough for everyday use. There was no where to store your music, photos, documents etc. /data is just for app data and settings. So this is where /sdcard comes in
/sdcard is the Android mount point for the External SD card in this legacy android device. This means that when you inserted a Micro SD card, Android used /sdcard as it's internal reference to where the card's storage is. The /sdcard was a necessity before you could take photos. Over time, bigger apps started to put other data here. For example, a GPS / Map application would store its apk (application package) in /data/app and store your personal configuration settings in /data/data but it may download and store offline maps somewhere on the /sdcard. In older devices, the internal Memory (NAND Flash) was usually too small to allow much data on it. Many users would have to root to get more storage space or keep uninstalling apps to keep the "low on space" warnings at bay
How the S3 is different
Well, the S3 is substantially different. There are of course SOME similarities. For example, the S3 still has internal NAND Flash Memory. This is often referred to as the eMMC (Embedded MultiMedia Card) - which still contains the /system and /data partitions, used in exactly the same way.
The main difference is /sdcard. The S3 is designed specifically so using an external micro sd card is NOT a necessity. It has a larger NAND Flash internal memory (eMMC) so it can also have an "internal SD card". This is where people start to get confused. The entire internal memory is an eMMC which is essentially an internal SD card, however a partition of that internal memory is /sdcard.
OK, I know - let me explain. /sdcard is a mount point that Android uses to know where to store /sdcard data. But on the S3, instead of storing it on a required external sd card, it points to an internal memory partition. Now here is the clever bit. The /sdcard actually points to /data/media (or /data/media/0 in Android 4.2 onwards). So you continue to have your /data partition, but within /data you have:
- /data/app
- /data/data
- /data/media
The clever thing is that the file system that android uses for /system and /data is a Linux file system called Extended FS. In our case, we use the Ext 4 file system. This is important to understand because these file systems do not work with Windows so an external SD card would usually be Fat 32 file system, or exFAT so we could plug it into our windows computers and read the contents. What Samsung have had to do is use the FUSE file system to allow /sdcard (or /data/media) to exist as a FAT file system within the EXT 4 file system. Clever stuff. But it has it's pro's and cons...
You lost me at file system
All electronic systems that have an operating system and store data use a file system. Think of it in it's simplest form. Imagine a school text book. It has lots of chapters about different things. It has a "Table of Contents" in the first few pages, telling you where each chapter in the book is so if you want to know what page chapter 13 is on, you look in the contents and find the page and go straight there - The alternative is looking through each page individually to find the chapter. Not a quick process.
Well data storage works the same. When you put a file on a hard drive, sdcard, USB stick (or whatever) it is written to a specific location. When it is written to this location, the location is added to the file system. So when you put word.doc onto the drive, The file system is informed of the (very complicated) location of the file. When you tell Windows, Android (or whatever) that you want to open word.doc, the operating system consults the File system and goes to retrieve the data from its true and real (yet very complicated) location on the drive.
There are many file system types still in use today. Usually they are operating system specific. For example, Ext 4 is a Linux file system (and Android by Proxy as it is Linux kernel based) and Windows cannot read Ext file systems. Similarly, exFAT is a Microsoft file system (also used for sdcards on the S3) and cannot be used (easily) on Linux machines. Since most everyday users of the S3 are Windows users, you can see now hopefully why it was important for Sasmung to use "magic" and implement FUSE to allow an exFAT file system to be used for /sdcard, within the Ext 4 partition of /data
Did I REALLY need to know ALL that?
You know what? Probably not but it may go some way to help understand the limitations we will cover later on.
A bit more info for the S3
Obviously, the internal memory supplied with the S3 may not be enough for all users so they added the ability to add expanded memory in the form of the Micro SD card. Android uses the Mount point of /extSdCard now, instead of /sdcard like it used for legacy devices - because /sdcard is already in use elsewhere.
One thing many of you have probably noticed is that with the S3, there is no option to mount the /sdcard or /extSdCard as USB Mass storage on your computer. You must use MTP or PTP.
PTP - Photo Transfer Protocol. When you connect your S3 to your computer using PTP, Your computer sees it as a camera. It will show photos on your "camera" and will set about implementing the default camera options (such as suggesting you import your photos) etc. It won't show documents or other media necessarily.
MTP - Media Transfer Protocol. When you connect your S3 to your computer, it will be seen as a media player. This should allow you full access to all the files on there, including word documents and the such like.
One of the reasons for this is that because /sdcard points to something using the FUSE file system and is not a true partition, it would be difficult to allow it to be used as USB Mass Storage. It may or may not be possible but the biggest advantage of using MTP / PTP is that the computer and the S3 can both access the internal memory at the same time. With USB Mass Storage (UMS) this is quite awkward and can result in errors.
Deleting data
This is partially why we needed to understand a little about file systems. So I could explain to you how data is handled when it is deleted.
As I explained earlier, when you write a file to memory, a corresponding entry is written to the file system to advise the OS where the data is. Sure, you may think you are writing the file to /sdcard/documents/work directory on the internal memory, but in reality these directories or folders do not actually exist at a memory hardware level. The data is written to a block and the file system is informed where that block is, how big the file is, what directory it should appear in to the OS etc. When a file is written the memory, the OS see's the available space go down and the used space go up. All this information comes from the file system.
When you delete the file, the actual data is NOT deleted. It remains where it is on the memory. The block is not overwritten. When the OS is told by the user to delete the file, the File system entry is deleted. This changes the free/used space as the file system is no longer accounting for the data, however the truth is the data still exists. When the next request to write a file to the memory comes from the OS, the file system will think the block where the old data was is empty and will overwrite it.
It is this difference between the file system and reality that allows data to be recovered by external software. if you do not write any data to the memory, external software can scan the memory for data whilst bypassing the file system all together. Ff course the window is small. You only have a very limited time to recover data before the file system allows the data to be overwritten with a new entry.
This is not just true of a deleted file. Even formatting the memory (which is actually just re-creating a new, blank file system) leaves all the data in tact behind-the-scenes and can all still be recovered until you start writing data to the memory. Cool huh?
Wow, all this time I've been stressing, is it really that simple?
Awwww snap! You got me. No it is not that simple. All this PC software, example: Piriform recuva only works on a computer drive. In windows, imagine this is anything with a Drive Letter. C: drive etc.
The only way to get a drive letter on your sdcard is to use USB Mass Storage mode, which as previously discussed - is not possible on your S3 (unless you are rooted, you can mount USB mass storage in custom recovery or use a UMS app from Play). The alternative is to use a card reader on your PC and put the sdcard in it.
There are also apps like Undelete for root users - which again, you guessed it - requires root. So if you're not rooted, it's simplest to use a card reader which can be bought for peanuts.
It's worth mentioning, NONE OF THE ABOVE will work with /sdcard on internal memory. It is not possible to get your data back once deleted from internal memory. Once gone, it's gone forever. You can only restore from /extSdCard (removable, external SDcard)
Phone won't boot, can I get my data back from internal memory?
Let's start by saying, it depends why your phone won't boot. If it's an SDS (Sudden Death Syndrome) type issue, where your internal eMMC (NAND FLash memory) has failed, then no. However, if you believe this is not the case then you can get your /sdcard data using adb BUT you need a custom recovery to be flashed via Odin before you do this. Read [REF] Understanding the basics before rooting your S3
However, if out of curiosity - you do still want to get your data off, using adb , read below:
Data corruption
When data becomes corrupt, there's really not a lot you can do. The file system knows where the data is already. If it's corrupt, you're stuck. Most common causes of corruption are:
1) Dirty unmount of /sdcard. SD card pulled out whilst it is being written to / phone shuts off whilst being written to. SOMETIMES - Plugging the card into a card reader in windows, Windows will ask to fix it and MAY fix it.
2) Fake SD card. This is really the MOST common. Get a card reader ans use:
h2testw.exe for windows to test your card in a card reader. Set it to read the full size of the card, which will take hours but well worth it.
If you get a result like this:
Code:
Warning: Only 63995 of 63996 MByte tested.
The media is likely to be defective.
3.8 GByte OK (8072512 sectors)
58.6 GByte DATA LOST (122989248 sectors)
Details:2 MByte overwritten (4096 sectors)Commonly, fake cards are reprogrammed to "think" they are high capacity cards, such as 32 GB or 64 GB to defraud buyers out of money. This is common on eBay (Never buy cards from eBay).
When these cards are formatted, the file system also thinks it is this fake capacity. Normally, when a card is full, the file system will report to the OS there is no more space and this prevents additional writes to the card. However, in the case where the card is 4GB and the File system thinks it is 64 GB, the tricked file system doesn't know the card is full. The file system keeps allowing data to be written to the card, over writing the existing data but without replacing the file system entries. The file system thinks data that has been overwritten hasn't been overwritten so when you try to open one of these files, it is essentially "corrupt" or non-existent.
Preventing data loss
Time to wise up guys. It is possible to recover data off your removable media, but internal memory - very unlikely. No apps on your PC or Android will help with deleted data. So you need to backup.
Dropbox - Use dropbox to automatically upload your photos to online storage.
Foldersync - Use FolderSync to upload important sdcard files to your dropbox account, or better yet - got a computer thats always on at home? Set foldersync to schedule a sync over wifi whilst you're asleep.
Other info
Interesting tidbits