How To PD SC6820 & SC8810 Full Backup Firmware

Hello there,

Today I will teach you how to make a full backup of your Spreadtrum phone !

This tutorial may also work on several other phones.

CWM can make a nearly full backup of your Spreadtrum, but it's not enough unfortunately.

Android is compartmented in 4 main partitions. You have theses partition:
* boot - It contains the Linux kernel
* System - It contains Android
* Recovery - It contains the recovery system, CWM if you installed it.
* DATA - It contain your personal datas, and should not be published online if you share your backup online.

But Android is one thing, your phone also have a lot of bios, firmwares, and bootloaders. Theses are not saved by traditional backup utilities such as CWM.

Theses partitions includes:
* UBoot - Very important, this thing is the low level bootloader. It starts Linux !
* Modem Firmware - used to dial with your GSM provider
* DSP Firmware - Make video playback smoother using DSP resources.
* NV - It's some kind of encryption key with some low levels parameters. Very important !
* Lots of misc stuffs - Like the boot logo, the kernel panics logs (record the boot-up errors to help the debugging process), etc ...
* Lots of important misc stuffs - For example what start-up the device even before handing the phone to Uboot.

This thread will cover a new way to backup your device, working "only" on rooted Spreadtrum devices.
With this you can recreate your original firmware file, and then rescue your phone even on the worst case you can find. (And help those with the same phone as you but have made a big flashing mistake)

So first, you will need to root your device. It may be simple or difficult, it all depends of the device you have. The instructions on how to root your device are here: Rooting Every Spreadtrum SC6820/SC8810 phones ! (1.5)

When you are rooted, you will have to install the Spreadtrum drivers if it's not already the case and log into your device with ADB.

You can download the drivers here:
Spreadtrum Drivers.7z
SCI-android-usb-driver-jungo-v4.7z

You can download ADB and learn how it work here: How To: Install ADB and Fastboot on your Windows computer for use with your Android phone | Reviews, news, tips, and tricks | dotTech

Then you will have to tell adb what phone to use. By that I mean adding the PCI ID to a text file to tell adb that this peripheral is compatible.

The Spreadtrum PCI ID is 0x1782

add this line to "Your user directory/.android/adb_usb.ini"

Code:

0x1782

So when you are ready to go, you have to download this file: backuptools.tar

Then with adb, push it on your device with this command:

Code:

adb push backuptools.tar /data/local/tmp

Now we will extract the tools with this command:

Code:

adb shell su -c "tar -xvpf /data/local/tmp/backuptools.tar"

And now, let's start the backup process:

Code:

adb shell su -c "./mkbackup.sh"

and here we go, just wait a while and every partitions on your phone will be saved in the backup directory on the sd card !

You will never have to backup this way again as those partitions are read only, if you don't do crazy things they will never change. But if you want to make another backup I suggest you go with CWM (read this page if you don't have it: Rooting Every Spreadtrum SC6820/SC8810 phones ! (1.5) -
Please do another backup with CWM even if everything as gone right with this method. Just to double check !

PS: if CWM does not work for you, you just have to send me your boot.img file from your backup and I will make one compatible with your phone.

To restore your backups you will also need to have CWM, you also can use ResearchDownload if you manage to entirely brick your phone or if any attempts to make a CWM recovery fails. I will have to do a tutorial about that too.