[Defy General] jonaut:
USB Mass Storage mode

Rob,

It's been nearly two weeks since your last post. I hope that you've had a nice Christmas and that you haven't lost interest in rooting your Defy Mini. You've asked some excellent questions. Your questions and the answers to them helped me to gain root access on my XT321. I understand your frustration. rootdefyxt320's answer to your question is quite correct, but I think you'd like to know exactly how to go about mounting USB Storage on your phone. I might be able to help.

First I'd like to say that all of us XT320/1 owners interested in rooting our devices owe a huge debt of gratitude to rootdefyxt320 for hacking the system boot file that allows us to install Fastboot. And, of course, his rooting instructions are spot on. They are, however, quite brief. Because of that they can be hard to follow for someone new to this process. So, with the risk of being too verbose, what follows is simply the expanded version of those instructions.

Like you, when I started this process I did not have the Motorola device drivers loaded on my computer. Before loading those drivers each time I plugged my phone into the computer using the USB cable it went right into USB Mass Storage mode. After loading the drivers however I had trouble getting it back into that mode. When I plugged the phone in some modem drivers loaded and the phone was recognized by the computer as a USB Modem. Since it was not a type of storage it did not show up in Windows Explorer but it did show up in Devices and Printers as a modem. This is a problem because in order to see the contents of the phone's SD Card on your computer, and to be able to transfer the update.zip folder to it, you need to be in USB Mass Storage mode. I think this is the problem you're seeing now.

I was able to get past this problem using the following steps: Turn your phone off, plug it into the computer, and then turn it on. When I did this I noticed that Windows was loading the USB Mass Storage drivers which is what you want. Once the phone is on all you have to do is unlock it (by sliding the green padlock to the right) and you should see a green android above a button which says, “Turn on USB storage” When you touch that button you will be in USB Mass Storage mode and a window will pop up on your computer giving you the option to “Open folder to view files.” Clicking on that will bring up Windows Explorer showing you the contents of your phone's SD card.

Hopefully that will work for you too. If not keep trying different combinations. For instance, try shutting down your computer and your phone. Power up your computer then, when it's stable and you're looking at your desktop, plug your phone in and turn it on. It seems that just after the installation of those Motorola drivers there is a bit of instability with the connections. The good news is that after you use them several times the problems seem to go away. Now, whenever I plug my phone in to my computer it goes right into USB Mass Storage mode – it doesn't matter whether it's on or off when I plug it in.

Once you get it into USB Mass Storage mode you can proceed with Step #6 of the instructions: putting the update.zip folder in the root of your sdcard. I'm assuming that you've been able to accomplish Steps 1 through 5 and Fastboot is installed on your phone. (You can check this by doing the following: Working with your phone disconnected from your computer - Power Off your phone. Now press and hold the volume+, volume-, and power buttons all for about 8 seconds, then let go. You should see a screen saying “FASTBOOT MODE” in red letters at the top. If you see this screen you have successfully completed Steps 1 through 5 and Fastboot is installed on your phone. If however, you see a screen with a graphic of a box and a little green android guy on it, Fastboot is not installed and you'll have to go back and redo Steps 1 - 5. To get out of that Fastboot Mode screen just use your volume + or – buttons to highlight “Reboot” and press the camera button to select it. If you got the screen with the box and the android graphic just press the power button and the same menu will come up. Select the “Reboot” option and press the camera button.)

OK, so you've got Fastboot installed. Now you need to put the update.zip folder in the root of your SD Card. To do this your phone needs to be connected to your computer and you need to be in USB Mass Storage mode. Using Windows Explorer go to where you extracted the files from the downloaded root_defy_mini_XT320_XT321.zip file. There you will find the folder named update.zip. You need to copy this to the root of your SD Card. This just means that it must be a primary folder on your SD Card – not a subfolder of any other folder. To do this just drag and drop it on the drive that Windows assigned to your SD Card when you went into USB Mass Storage mode. It will probably be drive D: and will look like this: “Removable Disk (D:)” But it could be E:, F:, or any other letter. Now when you click on “Removable Disk (D:)” in Windows Explorer you should see update.zip in there along with all the other contents of your SD Card.

Step #7 - says to go back to that folder on your computer where you found the update.zip file. This time we're looking for another file in that folder – the start_cwm_recovery.bat file. Just leave Windows Explorer open on your computer with those files visible.

Step #8 – Make sure your phone has USB Debugging enabled. On your phone go to Settings|Applications|Development and make sure the USB debugging box is green and checked.

Step #9 - says “click on the file named start_cwm_recovery.bat” This is not exactly right. You need to double-click on this file to run it. When it starts you will see a window pop up with white letters on a black screen. (This is called a “terminal” window.) It has the title “CWM Recovery auto reboot Script for Defy Mini” and it has 3 instructions. Then it says, “Press any key to continue...” Pick a key and press it. It now reboots your phone into Fastboot mode, followed shortly by the “ClockWorkMod Recovery v6.0.2.9” screen which contains a number of choices.

Step #10 – Select the option “Apply update.zip from sdcard” - but that wording is not one of the choices on this menu. The closest is “install zip from sdcard” So after highlighting that choice with the volume up/down buttons select it with the power button. Another menu will come up. From this menu you need to select “apply /sdcard/update.zip”

Step #11 - The next screen comes up saying, “Confirm Install? THIS CANNOT BE UNDONE.” It gives you a bunch of choices to say “No” but you need to select “Yes – Install /sdcard/update.” After it performs the update the bottom line will say, “Install from SDCard complete”

Step #12 – says to select reboot system now and select Yes to Fix Root. Well, on that last screen (with “Install from SDCard complete” on the bottom) there is no choice for rebooting the system. There is on the previous page however. So from this page you have to select “+++Go Back+++” to get to the page where the reboot system selection is found. Select it. Then you will get a screen that says something like “the phone may not be rooted” and you have a choice to “fix root” Select yes. Your phone will turn off at this point. Congratulations! It is now rooted.

You can remove the USB cable now and turn your phone on. You will notice that it still functions exactly as it did before you started this whole process.

I hope that helps.