[FULL EMMC BACKUP] The NiTRo TeaM

[daemonium]

THE NITRO TEAM
abdul_pt, nelo, daemonium, leolas, litry

First we will give proper credit to Gparted Live Iso Team, because we based this project on their work. So, Big thanks!! And of course, our work si GPL Licensed aswell,

This is a tool meant to boot from a usb pen drive and its purpose is to easy backup/restore the full emmc from your beautiful Z64.

If you do a backup and something weird happens (while trying to root, mess with filesystem, permissions...) , you can restore your backup and bring back to life your tvbox in a really easy way.

Requisites

1. 4GB microsd for a factory firmware backup, if you installed apps, consider using a microsd card between 8 and 32 gb. And if possible a class 10 card, but just for not making you wait so much when backing up. Read the extra notes at the end of this guide for a estimation.
2. Usb Pendrive > 1gb
3. keyboard

Steps

1. Download this ISO

2. Download RUFUS on your computer and install it


3. From Rufus itself select the downloaded ISO from first step, choose GPT mode

4. Make USB disk (my Rufus is in spanish, i don't know which name is in English)


5. Insert the USB pendrive and the microsd in your Z64

6. Boot and press the ESC key on your keyboard repeteadly until you enter the BIOS


7. Go to SAVE & EXIT > Boot Override > General UDisk 5.00 > press ENTER > answer YES (Note "General UDisk 5.0" may show up with a different name on yours

8. You will see the following screen, just press ENTER

9. On this menu , write 1 then press enter. If you choose "2" you will boot to graphical environment for advanced and MANUAL tweaking, you are on your own.

1. [*=center]

10. On this menu you can choose between BACKUP and RESTORE.

11. If you choose BACKUP, you must confirm by pressing the key “G” , that will ERASE completely the first partition on your microSD card and start the process. (as this step will make you wait some time it will be a good idea to sit down and watch some tv, or play with your kids, or give some love to your wife, hey, just giving some ideas LOL )

12. At the end you will have two files on your microsd card, fullbackup.gz and fullbackup.md5 , don't delete or edit it or it will not work for restore later.

EXTRA NOTES:

- If you do a factory reset on Z64A and then you back it up, the process will take about 20min in a class 10 microsd plus 2-3 minutes more for the checksum generation. The backup size will be around 2GB.

- On my own z64A with some apps installed, kodi, addons, etc, the backup is 3.9Gb, so i need a 8gb microsdcard (4gb microsdcard is never 4gb for real, it's allways about 3.7gb)

- Restoring a backup may take aprox about 1h

- We didn't try to restore a Z64W backup to Z64A tvbox, it may work or it may not but since you have a z64A backup you are safe to try it, if it doesn't work just restore your z64A backup.

- We are working hard on a v2 with a nicer and graphical interface with more interesting options, i.e. adding root.

Note by leolas: One more thing: Take care about upload a backup of your internal memory without a factory reset and erase the /sdcard/ folder, because this tool made a mirror of your internal emmc, so your google account, and personal data will be there, so if someone want to upload his backup, please take care about made a factory reset and erase personal data in /sdcard/ folder.


Thanks to :

-Freaktab!!
-Androidpc.es
-Minix!!
-Gparted Live Team
-Spok (leolas's dog)
-Msx2 from androidpc.es betatesting and for writing the spanish guide.

FEEL FREE TO SUPPORT THE TEAM BUYING US SOME COFFEE OR BEER

[superfreak79]

Beautiful! If I didnt already have 5 reasons to get one of these boxes, here's 1 more

Thanks

[tattman65]

really nice job guys !!!!

[leolas]

Thanks

[alwaysbless]

So does this back up recovery also (windows)? If so this is basically a full proof way of restoring everything to working condition outside of the bios getting corrupted or something?

[daemonium]

So does this back up recovery also (windows)? If so this is basically a full proof way of restoring everything to working condition outside of the bios getting corrupted or something?

This backs up everything inside emmc. No matter what's installed there.
Think in emmc just like a computer's harddrive. As long as you be able to get into the Bios, you can boot our tool and restore your backup, no matter what's installed there.
Also, if you choose the advanced option, you can run gparted to change or resize partitions. In example, you can make the /system partition to be only 1gb and to make /data partition to be 4G. That will leave you with enough free room for installing another OS there

[no_spam_for_me]

NICE !
Q&D solution instead of using e.g. clonezilla...

:
- We didn't try to restore a Z64W backup to Z64A tvbox, it may work or it may not but since you have a z64A backup you are safe to try it, if it doesn't work just restore your z64A backup.
:

I don't think so because of UEFI 64bit at A box vs. UEFI 32bit at W box...

[daemonium]

edit just in case.

[Micropixel]

EMMC Backup

Any chance someone can upload their backup? My z64a has Linux on it but since nothing is supported I want to go back to android,
problem is I didn't backup my EMMC which was really stupid.

[Finless]

I am OK with someone posting a Android backup of the Z64a. This is like uploading a Android ROM.

But do NOT post a Windows backup image for copyright reasons.

Bob

[leolas]

Any chance someone can upload their backup? My z64a has Linux on it but since nothing is supported I want to go back to android,
problem is I didn't backup my EMMC which was really stupid.

Sorry a lot, but you will not really want to take my backup , because I have the partitions resized to play with linux and windows installations in the device, so my device is very far away of an clean install
I am waiting for Ken from minix to upload the tool to put the device in the very initial state, (http://www.minixforum.com/threads/re...-nothing.4735/)

One more thing: Take care about upload a backup of your internal memory without a factory reset and erase the /sdcard/ folder, because this tool made a mirror of your internal emmc, so your google account, and personal data will be there, so if someone want to upload his backup, please take care about made a factory reset and erase personal data in /sdcard/ folder.

I am OK with someone posting a Android backup of the Z64a. This is like uploading a Android ROM.

But do NOT post a Windows backup image for copyright reasons.

Bob

Of course, Bob is right about this, no windows backups allowed to be posted please.

[Micropixel]

Sorry a lot, but you will not really want to take my backup , because I have the partitions resized to play with linux and windows installations in the device, so my device is very far away of an clean install
I am waiting for Ken from minix to upload the tool to put the device in the very initial state, (http://www.minixforum.com/threads/re...-nothing.4735/)

One more thing: Take care about upload a backup of your internal memory without a factory reset and erase the /sdcard/ folder, because this tool made a mirror of your internal emmc, so your google account, and personal data will be there, so if someone want to upload his backup, please take care about made a factory reset and erase personal data in /sdcard/ folder.


Of course, Bob is right about this, no windows backups allowed to be posted please.

Yes, I thought about that today, whoever is kind enough to upload his emmc backup should do a factory reset of his device first, or atleast remove data he doesn't want to be shared.

and of course, I asked for android since it's an open source platform and it's free, so no legal issues there.

[gazzabnumb83]

m8 u are a life a saver keep up the good work !!!

[blackstarr]

as always, awesome work guys!

[alwaysbless]

I tried this with 3 different microsd cards and my box kept giving 'ERROR 1: MICROSD IS NOT PRESENT' even though all of the cards are recognized in android and windows.