[Galaxy Note GT-N7000 General] apurvapatel:
Lost the battle to bad sectors

Finally I give up!

I give up the partitioning and re-partitioning. And also the flashing and the re-flashing...

I got frustrated after four days and two sleepness nights of all that and finally decided to flash the Angelom 1.2 kernel... It removes yellow triangle and resets the counter to zero. But downside.... (be warned) almost 100% chances of getting your Note "supreme" bricked.

My Yellow Triangle is gone and my download mode screen show:

CUSTOM BINARY DOWNLOAD: NO

CURRENT BINARY: SAMSUNG OFFICIAL

My story goes like this....

I was on official Indian ICS ROM. Rooted as per Dr. Ketan's method. All running good.

I read about the new S Voice from Galaxy S3 apk that can be installed on our Note running on ICS. Without thinking much, I installed it. The phone froze. On hot reboot, the initial screen said "FIRMWARE UPGRADE ENCOUNTERED AN ISSUE. PLEASE SELECT RECOVERY MODE IN KIES & TRY AGAIN" I screwed my Note big time!

I took it to Samsung Service Center and they said I will need to get the MB replaced and it wont be covered under warrenty since my Note was rooted. Obviously I didnt leave the phone with them. Didnt want to pay about $150. Being a xda-developers forum fan, I thought I'll be able to flash a rom via odin. But...... lucky me! PC Odin froze at the start of the factoryfs write. So official roms flashing with Odin was out of question for me now. Odin would only flash kernels now.

Searching through the forums, I found this post and thought of giving it a try. Again, lucky me! Custom binary count started adding up.

Re-partitioning the Note threw up bad sectors at FACTORYFS and the DATAFS partitions but got me up to Abyss 3.9 kernel (Abyss 4.2 didnt work for me) and CheckROM V6 GB rom. But it booted only once and then the Note froze. Upon hot booting, it wouldnt boot up at all. Either it would freeze at the Samsung glowing logo or if it did boot up, all the foreground and background apps/services would force close.... phone would freeze and again the loop.... freeze at logo or services and apps FC.

Only solution..... re-partition again. That would show more bad sectors. (I have pasted the actual partition , first re-partition and the second re-partition table towards the end.)

Eventually I decided to use TriangleAway app by ChainFire. But for that I would need ICS ROM. Stock wouldnt install, so custom was the only solution.

I,this time decided to directly go with ICS and flashed ICS Stunner on the Note. It wouldnt boot up even once. Would get stuck at the circular animated android screen.

All this while the Download mode and the Recovery mode was accessible. Never had issues all this while.

Shuffling between the GB CheckROM V6 and the ICS Stunner and not seeing any progress frustrated me. Finally I had had enough. I decided to flash the Angelom 1.2 kernel from http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1663237&highlight=jig&page=2

With the binary download showing zero and the yellow triangle gone... I had to get rid of the custom recovery. Flashed a stock kernel via PC ODIN and got the default recovery mode!

Finally all the traces of root are gone from my phone and the guys at SSC shouldnt know of any of this.

From what I understand.... Angelon kernel is an old kernel and has had issues about bricking the phone beyond repair. So again.... BE WARNED ABOUT USING THE ANGELON KERNEL.

My gratitude to forest1971, uggies, prabhu1980, drnull and many more...to all the users on this thread who have got their Note bricked and made even a little progress... and obviously also to all the users here who have got their Note unbricked succesfully.

Finally, the partition... went from (original)

Model: MMC VYL00M (sd/mmc)

Disk /dev/block/mmcblk0: 15.8GB

Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B

Partition Table: gpt

Number Start End Size File system Name Flags

1 4194kB 25.2MB 21.0MB ext4 EFS

2 25.2MB 26.5MB 1311kB SBL1

3 27.3MB 28.6MB 1311kB SBL2

4 29.4MB 37.7MB 8389kB PARAM

5 37.7MB 46.1MB 8389kB KERNEL

6 46.1MB 54.5MB 8389kB RECOVERY

7 54.5MB 264MB 210MB ext4 CACHE

8 264MB 281MB 16.8MB MODEM

9 281MB 1174MB 893MB FACTORYFS

10 1174MB 3322MB 2147MB ext4 DATAFS

11 3322MB 15.2GB 11.9GB fat32 UMS

12 15.2GB 15.8GB 537MB ext4 HIDDEN

to (first re-partition)

Number Start End Size File system Name Flags

1 4194kB 25.2MB 21.0MB ext2 EFS

2 25.2MB 26.5MB 1311kB SBL1

3 27.3MB 28.6MB 1311kB SBL2

4 29.4MB 37.7MB 8389kB PARAM

5 37.7MB 46.1MB 8389kB KERNEL

6 46.1MB 54.5MB 8389kB RECOVERY

7 54.5MB 264MB 210MB ext4 CACHE

8 264MB 281MB 16.8MB MODEM

9 3322MB 4215MB 893MB ext4 FACTORYFS

10 4215MB 5362MB 1147MB ext4 DATAFS

11 5362MB 15.2GB 9838MB fat32 UMS msftres

12 15.2GB 15.8GB 537MB ext4 HIDDEN

to (second re-partition)

1 4194kB 25.2MB 21.0MB ext2 EFS

2 25.2MB 26.5MB 1311kB SBL1

3 27.3MB 28.6MB 1311kB SBL2

4 29.4MB 37.7MB 8389kB PARAM

5 37.7MB 46.1MB 8389kB KERNEL

6 46.1MB 54.5MB 8389kB RECOVERY

7 54.5MB 264MB 210MB CACHE

8 264MB 281MB 16.8MB MODEM

9 3322MB 4215MB 893MB ext4 FACTORYFS

10 5462MB 6609MB 1147MB ext4 DATAFS

11 6670MB 15.2GB 8530MB fat32 UMS msftres

12 15.2GB 15.8GB 537MB ext4 HIDDEN

Apurva

---------- Post added at 07:57 AM ---------- Previous post was at 07:55 AM ----------

My suggestion to all those who are trying to unbrick their Note...

Try a couple of times. If it still throws up bad sectors at you, like mine did..... save yourself the trouble and the frustration and get the binary count and the triangle reset with the Angelon kernel (which can "supreme" brick your phone.)

BUT IF ANYTHING GOES WRONG... DO NOT POINT THE FINGER AT ME.... :p I, just, am sharing my experiance with the binary counter.