Restoring E70 memory card backup after SW update fails

[jloponen]

I made a backup of my phone to two memory cards and tested restore with them before I updated my phone firmware at Nokia Service Point. After update neither one of the 14 MB backups restored. The restore process took only about twoseconds. With older software it took about two minutes.

I think the memory card tool has corrupted both of my backups on different memory cards or my backup contains something the memory card tool cannot handle. Is there a way to get at least contacts and calendar from the backup.arc file? Do I need to install some software before restore works?

It seems that the backup.arc file contains some kind of phone information at the beginning of the file. There is file names with sizes later in the file, but I could not resolve where the actual file data is located.

[jloponen]

I managed to get all files but NO contacts, messages or calendar using S60 3rd ed. emulator from my backup changing header of the backup file and using this:

67 46 1F 10 00 00 00 00 CC CC AC 0B A5 D1 F9 01 01 00 01 00 F5 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 07 78 78 78 2D 78 78 78 DD 57

instead of this:

67 46 1F 10 00 00 00 00 CC CC AC 0B A5 D1 F9 01 01 00 01 00 F5 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 05 52 4D 2D 31 30 78 9C DD 57

Basically RM-10 and some data after it was overwritten with xxx-xxx that is used with emulator. I used S60 3rd Edition SDK for Symbian OS, for C++, Maintenance Release.

With final release of emulator, the backup utility did not even make backup at all.

Any help? I tried also replacing RM-10 without overwriting data, but then I get a message "Memory card: System error (-20)".

The number before model defines string length for model.
07 xxx-xxx
05 RM-10

The number before file names defines file name length. Length is the number divided by four. There is a fixed length block of 56 bytes between file infos.

[jloponen]

I made a program that can extract files from Backup.arc file, but I still have not found out how to get contacts, notes and calendar from the file. They are located at end of the file after file names.

Emulator seems to be able to extract contacts. If contacts file is not created, after restore there a file without any contacts. Restart after restore hangs so, I don't know if the contents would be filled later during restart process.

[jloponen]

I found my mail and wireless connetion setttings in folder c\private\10202be9\persists directory. The folder contains .cre files, but none of them contains calendar, notes or contacts data.

[jloponen]

Now I got all data from the backup. Problem solved.

[nudelsnack]

As I have the same problem: Could you tell me how you solved it?

THX =)

[jloponen]

I made a php script that seeks for a header before file infos and then extracts gzcompressed blocks starting with hex 0x78 0x9c and renames them with the information in file infos. It could have done faster with block addresses in file infos, but this seemed to work for me.

After file infos there is compressed blocks starting with 0x78 0xda. These blocks contain calendar, notes, contacts, settings... After uncompression these files have headers before data that contains file names. Headers must be removed so that files can be copied back to the phone.

Files were easy to copy back to the phone, but for contacts, notes and calendar I just put them to the emulator and connected to a sync server.

After updating my phone to version 2.xxx even my phone was able to restore backups.

At Nokia Sevice Point(s) they said all the backups I made during couple months are corrupted. I didn't believe them and said it was a problem with firmware. After more arguing they sent my phone to another service point and it returned with a comment "Backup is corrupted". Nothing was done with the phone during three weeks repair. Even firmware was not updated, so I used Nokia phone software update after I got the phone back.

[nudelsnack]

Could you perhaps send me that script? I synced my device to mobical.net before but somehow there were no calendar entries restored.

[baha.d]

I'm having pretty much the same problem with jloponen, just made a backup to memory card (E:\Backup\backup.arc 224.7kb) used nokia software updater and updated 6630 firmware to V.5.03.08, and now i cannot restore back. how did you solved it? you mentioned about a program that you wrote, could it be the solution ?

[jloponen]

Somehow I didn't receive any e-mail when someone had posted to this thread.

Here is some version of my php-script that did uncompression for files. It does not parse file names.

<?php

header("Content-Type: "."text/plain");
$index = 0;

echo "Finding headers..\n";
//while(!(FALSE === ($iParse = strpos ($compressed, chr(0x78).chr(0xda)))) )
while(!(FALSE === ($iParse = strpos ($compressed, chr(0x78).chr(0x9c)))) )
{
  $iSkip = 1;
  echo "iParse: ".$iParse."  DataLeft: ".strlen($compressed)."\n";
  $compressed = substr($compressed, $iParse);
  if(FALSE != ($uncompressed = gzuncompress($compressed)) )
  {
    //$iSkip = strlen(gzcompress($uncompressed, 6));
    //              file_put_contents("bck_".$index, $uncompressed);
    $filename = "bck_".$index;
    if (!$handle = fopen($filename, 'a')) {
      echo "Cannot open file ($filename)";
      continue;
    }

     if (fwrite($handle, $uncompressed) === FALSE) {
         echo "Cannot write to file ($filename)";
     }

     fclose($handle);

    $index++;
  }

  echo "Skipping ".$iSkip."\n";
  //remove "x"
  $compressed  = substr($compressed, $iSkip);
}
?>

[rm2000]

Hi,

can you help me with this and send me the instructions as to how to. Will greatly appreciate it. Can email me on ravimehta75@hotmail.com.

Thank you

[jloponen]

I thought I wrote to developer discussions board. I'm quite busy from now to just before christmas so I don't have much time for helping other people.

You can probably extract files renamed to "bck_XX" with my script, rename them with real names and copy them back to your phone with FExporer (pre S60 3rd ed,).


Is there something specific about restoring you wanted to ask?

Here is couple links that may be useful:
PHP-tutorial for understanding what my script does
Wikipedia entry for hex editors and download links
Guide to restoring files

[aidanpadden]

Just wanted to say thanks for the script above, I've never touched PHP before tonight but took what you'd got and modified to get it to read in the backup.arc file, and it's worked a treat, except I've been through all the extracted files and can't see any messages or contacts?

Could you please let me know how you managed to retrieve those if possible?

I've included the modified code as below to run from the command line, just make sure that you run it via the php tool in the same directory as the backup.arc - just modify the code if you want to hardcode it to a location or change the filename accessed.

<?php

$index = 0;
$backupfilename = "backup.arc";

$fr = fopen($backupfilename,'rb');
$compressed = fread($fr, filesize($backupfilename));

echo "Finding headers..\n";
while(!(FALSE === ($iParse = strpos ($compressed, chr(0x78).chr(0x9c)))) )
{
  $iSkip = 1;
  echo "iParse: ".$iParse."  DataLeft: ".strlen($compressed)."\n";
  $compressed = substr($compressed, $iParse);
  if(FALSE != ($uncompressed = gzuncompress($compressed)) )
  {
    $filename = "bck_".$index;
    if (!$handle = fopen($filename, 'a')) {
      echo "Cannot open file ($filename)";
      continue;
    }

     if (fwrite($handle, $uncompressed) === FALSE) {
         echo "Cannot write to file ($filename)";
     }

     fclose($handle);

    $index++;
  }

  echo "Skipping ".$iSkip."\n";
  //remove "x"
  $compressed  = substr($compressed, $iSkip);
}
fclose ($backupfilename);
?>

Thanks in advance

..:: Edit ::..

Sorry just reread your post saying that they have the slightly different byte headers so going to try that now!

[aidanpadden]

That's worked straight off the bat, in terms of it's extracted the data containing my messages and contacts!

Here we go if anyone ever wants to do this in the future - I don't know if these are usable on the phone but I can read them on the computer and that's good enough for me!

<?php

//header("Content-Type: "."text/plain");
$index = 0;

$backupfilename = "backup.arc";

$fr = fopen($backupfilename,'rb');
$compressed = fread($fr, filesize($backupfilename));
echo strlen($compressed);

echo "Finding headers..\n";
while(!(FALSE === ($iParse = strpos ($compressed, chr(0x78).chr(0xda)))) )
{
  $iSkip = 1;
  echo "iParse: ".$iParse."  DataLeft: ".strlen($compressed)."\n";
  $compressed = substr($compressed, $iParse);
  if(FALSE != ($uncompressed = gzuncompress($compressed)) )
  {
    $filename = "bck_".$index;
    if (!$handle = fopen($filename, 'a')) {
      echo "Cannot open file ($filename)";
      continue;
    }

     if (fwrite($handle, $uncompressed) === FALSE) {
         echo "Cannot write to file ($filename)";
     }

     fclose($handle);

    $index++;
  }

  echo "Skipping ".$iSkip."\n";
  //remove "x"
  $compressed  = substr($compressed, $iSkip);
}
?>

Thanks again jloponen

[jloponen]

Just wanted to say thanks for the script above, I've never touched PHP before tonight but took what you'd got and modified to get it to read in the backup.arc file, and it's worked a treat, except I've been through all the extracted files and can't see any messages or contacts?

Could you please let me know how you managed to retrieve those if possible?

For contacts and calendar I had to remove header from the beginning of the extracted files manually. Then I just copied files with correct names to emulator and synced with server to get them back to phone. If your phone has S60 3rd software, this should work.