[Galaxy Note II Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] mrmuhkuh:
Hello everyone!

I am (until recently) happy user of a Galaxy Note II N7105. And because it already did everything I needed, I never rooted it, installed CWN/TWRP or flashed a custom ROM. It is 4.1.2 (Hong Kong) version and had only OTA updates until now.

Problem description:

At some point I ran out of internal storage about which the system notified me. I deleted some stuff and rebooted - and then it got stuck in a boot loop. That is after the initial splash screen, it repeats the pretty blue/purple swoosh animation with SAMSUNG indefinitely (at least 20min, battery pulled after that).

As for now, I can get into RECOVERY MODE and DOWNLOAD MODE. Because I still have important data on the internal sd, I don't want to wipe the data/factory reset it. My goal now is just to access the internal storage and extract the data stored on it.

What I have tried:

After installing the drivers I could connect my phone with my laptop. From there I could access my phone via adb

>adb devices
List of devices attached
42f71b0bf29aaf97 recovery

where I entered the shell (no root --> no su rights) to access all the data and, if possible, use adb pull to copy it to my laptop. But somehow, the two folders sdcard and sdcard1 are empty:

>adb shell
shell@android:/ $ ls
ls
cache
data
default.prop
dev
efs
etc
fstab.smdk4x12
init
init.rc
lib
lpm.rc
preload
proc
res
root
sbin
sdcard
sdcard1
sys
system
tmp
ueventd.goldfish.rc
ueventd.rc
ueventd.smdk4x12.rc
shell@android:/ $ cd sdcard
cd sdcard
shell@android:/sdcard $ ls
ls
shell@android:/sdcard $ cd ../sdcard1
cd ../sdcard1
shell@android:/sdcard1 $ ls
ls
shell@android:/sdcard1 $

So I was wondering if the internal sdcard (suspect it should be /sdcard) needed to be mounted first, but I could not find a mount point to do so:

shell@android:/sdcard1 $ mount
mount
rootfs / rootfs rw 0 0
tmpfs /dev tmpfs rw,nosuid,relatime,mode=755 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts rw,relatime,mode=600 0 0
proc /proc proc rw,relatime 0 0
sysfs /sys sysfs rw,relatime 0 0
/dev/block/mmcblk0p12 /cache ext4 rw,nodev,noatime,nodiratime,barrier=1,data=ord
ered 0 0
/dev/block/mmcblk0p13 /system ext4 rw,nodev,noatime,nodiratime,barrier=1,data=or
dered 0 0

==> Is there a way to mount/access the internal sd card from recovery?​

I also tried to simple use the command adb pull so that it would copy everything. sadly, it only copied the two folders /sys and /system which are no use to me.

What I have also tried:

Install stock ROMS of 4.1.2 and 4.3 from external sd, via ODIN and adb sideload

GT-N7105_TGY_1_20121026091349_N7105ZHALJ4.zip

NEE-N7105XXUEMK5-20131119111744.zip

(and several others, accidentally also ones for N7100 which also didn't work)
​

but it resulted in E: signature verification failed

Install CWM and TWRP from external sd and ODIN but both also ended up in E: signature verification failed

Kies: But this somehow always entails a factory reset/wipe data which I want to avoid

==> Where can I get an original 4.1.2 stock ROM that is signed by Samsung?​

I'm open to whatever approaches to get the data.

My thought is: Once it is connected to the laptop, can't I access it as an external hard drive? Any program to do that?

Any help is greatly appreciated! :)

mrmuhkuh