[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Old faithful:
That's very astute... You must me a very careful person by nature, hehe, I also have multiple copies of my backups from the SD card as well, including the clockworkmod system backups for my Note 2...

Theoretically yes, since you need to be able to write a large amount of data and historically flash memory is less reliable than magnetic memory, but the nice thing is, there actually is a memory test feature in carlivrecovery that should alleviate any worries. Furthermore, a problem would under normal circumstances simply pop up in normal operation since the device constantly writes to itself.

There is also the possibility, during a long transfer, that your computer may experience interruptions, and I remembered last night while I was walking the dog, why using a fresh computer was so important and that I should have mentioned it: the computer must have the least interruptions and be the lest interfered with and must essentially be fully your own, with NO security interruptions, NO user account control, NO power management, and a large, fully recharged device and computer battery in case ther would be a power failure while you were doing a flash... Furthermore, the freedom from possible extraneous interference is one of the reasons why the command line is inherently so much more reliable, as it is one layer less between you and the machine you want to talk to. Case in point, during DOS days, we would NEVER experience software crashes, the computer would simply not respond or respond with an error message if we issued bad commands. But crashes simply didn't exist, except those caused by issues with the notoriously unreliable diskette media that would become unreadable/writable, similarly to flash nowadays.

Like I said earlier, the problem with that is by the time one usually needs service due to hardware issues, the device has had so many customizations that only a complete restore, but also very likely, a complete reflash can get rid of every trace of true, 'illegal' user ownership and only a complete format in that process can insure complete personal data deletion (although it is admittedly possible from recovery) .

If one needs service because one really bricked the device on a fundamental level, it is usually impossible to reset the device to factory condition and only a reflash will do. If something really bad was done to make it impossible for the device to be written to externally, as we see sometimes here, then only a JTAG can correrct the issue, but that would require dismantling the device. I remember in the Free To Air days, Satellite TV providers would essentially try to brick FTA receivers if they were used to illegally access paid TV subscription and when it happened you'd have to install (solder) a JTAG (essentially, a port soldered directly to the internal flash memory on the device's PCB so that you could connect your computer to it so as to write directly to the chip to revive the device)

Of course, by the time this would be needed on a phone or tablet, considering how they are manufactured and how difficult it is to take them apart without damage and their relatively low cost of replacement, they would essentially become, at least economically and likely also, considering how small the components are, technically, unrepairable, in which case you would likely lose warranty, should the repair person be able to determine the problem was indeed caused by a bad flash.

Of course, you could pretend 'it simply stopped working', which may well work if the repair person doesn't employ forensic methods to determine the cause of the problem, which, when you think of it, is quite likely considering labor costs and the value of the product in the first place. For a $200 tablet, there is presumably less incentive by manufacturers to go that route, but not as much on $800 smart phones such as the high end Galaxy models...

As for reliability, I don't know about the Lenovo - I've owned a Thinkpad before and it has been quite reliable so I have high hopes, it's certainly not a no-name $50 tablet like we see in supermarket aisles these days, and the Note 2 has been more reliable than any device I have owned before and has been going strong over the past three years so hopefully this tablet will be as reliable, in any case there are people who flash their devices nightly and they don't seem to experience any more hardware issues than the regular folks we are, except for problems caused by gross error.

If you've had another android device before, I simply sideloaded the most useful apps from the Note 2 backups and, except for a few that rely on sensors the tablet doesn't have or those that expect lower resolution screens, they pretty much all seem to work well. What is it that you need to do?

I would say it's a must have, since it allows incremental back ups of selected apps. But as with any other backup program, it does have a learning curve as you need to establish the kind of backup you need. Plus it tends to use a lot of memory over time, especially if, like me, you need more than one version of everything you work on. One more reason to get as large an external SD card as possible (along with the possibility to use the tablet to watch movies without the hassle with bandwidth speed, access and monthly allocation)...

No problem if its for warranty return purposes, the issue is that is it would update to Lollipop and although it may well fix the unrepairable issue you had been experiencing (such as poor WiFi - no high hopes for a fix soon I'm afraid), it may well introduce undesirable 'updates' and 'features' more aimed at limiting your freedoms by turning ownership into renting and freedom into slavery in order for Google to make more money by essentially turning you even more into a product than the free person you should strive to remain. And if my experience with software updates in the past 15 years is any indication, it's more likely to be that way, unfortunately. I mean, how many people will, like myself, willingly struggle for a week to unshackle himself from the chains of this new form of tyranny?

No difference except the zip update is one YOU control, the off the air one is one GOOGLE OR THE MANUFACTURER controls.

I got them here, use Google translate if you don't understand German.

Quite right, and it is the reason I prefer to navigate to where the proper inf file and always open it up in notepad to make sure the code does reference the proper driver. I also make sure the file date is the most recent, as drivers usually don't suffer from the political correctness operating systems and applications usually suffer from and are therefore usually more trustworthy, except for genuine coding mistakes. In comparison, newer versions of software, especially that written by or for large corporations are usually designed to dumb down users to catch as many of them, like fish, for the simple reason of monetizing actions you would previously have total control of, such as owning your own backups and licenses to software instead of renting software and giving companies such as Google full access to your content in exchange for the convenience of not needing your own storage, which of course seems all fine and dandy until you realize it all ends up in the hands of the NSA. But I digress...

My understanding of the process is that when you flash a custom recovery, you only write it to the ROM area of memory, like you would copy a program or an image of your operating system install in your data partition of your hard disk. It only gets written to the actual 'RAM' of the device, the part that is constantly accessed and read to in actual daily use, when you activate it the first time. Think of it a similar process to resetting your device to factory condition is actually writing the RAM with the contents of the ROM stored in the device after you flashed it onto the device through SP Flash: that's the reason it takes such a long time to start a device after a complete ROM flash.

I'm not sure but I'm guessing that the stock boot and recovery must have some sort of feature to recognize a 'foreign' boot/recovery image and overwrite it when it does with itself. Good question! maybe a more knowledgeable person than I can chip in and explain it more accurately ;)

After second thought, you are quite right - you should still be able to reset the device to factory condition that way, without having to flash the whole ROM, unless, of course, it too got corrupted.

I believe you are quite right indeed, unless the device got so corrupted that it isn't possible to reset it and only a complete format and reflash will do (like happened to me a few times in the past three years with my Note 2).

Not with such a device, but with my first smartphone - I flashed a custom ROM through the RUU (Rom Update Utility) but unfortunately also overwrote the radio settings and lost cellular function, so I had no choice but to return it for reapir - since after reflashing the stock ROM it was otherwise completely stock. So they simply reflashed the radio configuration data and all was fine afterwards. Mind you, that was when I knew very little about these things, at a time when flashing devices was really in its infancy and the tools available were really primitive, kludgy applications written seat-of-the-pants style by some enthusiasts with limited access to insider knowledge and clever reverse engineering, before the days of Android and its inherently open source origins.

If my experience dealing with warranty service is any indication, companies usually don't invest into forensics when it comes to inexpensive devices. Unless, of course, you are dealing with a device whose manufacturer actively fights the customizing crowd, like Samsung with its KNOX 'tampering recorder' and its encrypted boot mechanisms... One reason I won't upgrade to another Samsung phone (or any other user hostile device for that matter), unless it is actually possible to actually, truly own it. It is a sine qua non condition outside of which I simply refuse to purchase any product. Actually, it is my belief that unless we, The People, rise against the pure evil of this new form of slavery, we will all be enslaved, and IMO it is one of the most troubling trends we are faced with as humans in the coming future.[COLOR=black ! important]

[COLOR=black ! important]---------- Post added at 16:17 ---------- Previous post was at 16:11 ----------

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Great resource, man, I'll make sure to download everything ;) My last response took so long by the time I was finished my supper had turned into charcoal in the oven ;)[COLOR=black ! important]

[COLOR=black ! important]---------- Post added at 16:52 ---------- Previous post was at 16:17 ----------

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I second that and I can tell you that before I made my SD Card readable (it may have been because of exFAT, not the KitKat limitation), it simply wasn't visible through carliv recovery. Maybe EternalGrump could try with an otherwise Android readable SD Card, either a 32GB card or a "fat32format"-ted 64GB SD Card.

I'm in the same boat. I don't intend to watch movies that are more than 4GB in size on the tablet ;)

Besides, the procedure stated in those links appears quite involved. I just don't see the necessity for it.

fat32format is so easy to use it makes the matter academic under most circumstances.

Is it a full SP Flash flashable ROM or is it like the lage ZIP posted on http://www.android-hilfe.de/thema/lenovo-tab-2-a10-70f-linksammlung-firmware-recovery-root.739625/ ?[COLOR=black ! important]

[COLOR=black ! important]---------- Post added at 17:06 ---------- Previous post was at 16:52 ----------

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Since we're here on this thread, I have a couple of off-topic questions that you could perhaps shed some light on:

- Have you been able to successfully tweak the colors of the display to be less garish? It seems the adjustments in Miravision on the KitKat ROM are extremely limited and hardly do anything at all. My skin tones are all ruddy and the color intensity is simply too blasted, like on an un-managed wide gamut monitor (I don't have that problem on my Note 2). Is there any solution to this issue, does Miravision work any better in the Lollipop ROM?

- I can't seem to be able to set wallpaper right without the system cropping the image, no matter the size of the original picture, whetehr the image is below, the same or above native screen resolution. I have tried different apps and they all give the same results and am at a loss to figure what could be wrong.