Extracting/Browsing a TWRP Backup?

silentecho13 · Aug 1, 2012

So, I just flashed CleanROM 4.5. Everything went smoothly, except I've lost all my sms/mms messages from both Go SMS and the default Messaging app.

I have a TWRP backup here on the computer, as well as a TiBu backup of all user apps.

I can't seem to find the SMS database in the TiBu backup at all, and I can't figure out how to browse the TWRP backup to find it.

Nandroid Explorer doesn't read TWRP backups either...

Anyone have a solution?

thejosh86 · Aug 1, 2012

silentecho13 said:
So, I just flashed CleanROM 4.5. Everything went smoothly, except I've lost all my sms/mms messages from both Go SMS and the default Messaging app.

I have a TWRP backup here on the computer, as well as a TiBu backup of all user apps.

I can't seem to find the SMS database in the TiBu backup at all, and I can't figure out how to browse the TWRP backup to find it.

Nandroid Explorer doesn't read TWRP backups either...

Anyone have a solution?

Not sure if it's available in the Free Version but Titanium Backup allows you to extract from a Nandroid backup.

I just checked and it gave me a listing of all the apps I have installed and there was one listed as Messages, I can only assume that it's my texts.

silentecho13 · Aug 1, 2012

Yes I do have the paid version. I tried restoring both Go SMS and the Messages app from TiBu using my TWRP backup, but they basically just reinstall the app. I still have no messages in either app :/

thejosh86 · Aug 1, 2012

I didn't realise TiBu was Titanium - how retarded of me... haha

Any chance of backing this one up restoring the other nandroid and then backing up the txt's from within the stock messaging app then restoring?

Unless someone else knows how open .win files

silentecho13 · Aug 1, 2012

I did think of that, but I don't want to run the risk of a corrupted restore. I've had it happen s bunch of times, unfortunately.

Sent from my HTC One X using xda premium

TheNightHawk223 · Aug 1, 2012

silentecho13 said:
So, I just flashed CleanROM 4.5. Everything went smoothly, except I've lost all my sms/mms messages from both Go SMS and the default Messaging app.

I have a TWRP backup here on the computer, as well as a TiBu backup of all user apps.

I can't seem to find the SMS database in the TiBu backup at all, and I can't figure out how to browse the TWRP backup to find it.

Nandroid Explorer doesn't read TWRP backups either...

Anyone have a solution?

Yep, it's fully possible. Just get the nandroid backup file, and make a copy and change the extension to .zip After that just unzip, and volia. A bit of searching (should be in the apps file, I forgot the details).

Sent from my HTC One XL using xda premium

silentecho13 · Aug 2, 2012

TheNightHawk223 said:
Yep, it's fully possible. Just get the nandroid backup file, and make a copy and change the extension to .zip After that just unzip, and volia. A bit of searching (should be in the apps file, I forgot the details).

Sent from my HTC One XL using xda premium

....so I saw this too late.

I went and restored my backup, grabbed the files, and restored the new backup hoping that neither were corrupted.

It all went smoothly, but I'll definitely remember this for the next time I mess up...haha.

Thanks!

TheNightHawk223 · Aug 2, 2012

silentecho13 said:
....so I saw this too late.

I went and restored my backup, grabbed the files, and restored the new backup hoping that neither were corrupted.

It all went smoothly, but I'll definitely remember this for the next time I mess up...haha.

Thanks!

Glad I could help, almost everything that uses the term "compressed" seems to be able to be turned into a .zip

Sent from my HTC One XL using xda premium

eldamobo · Apr 23, 2013

Sorry I'm not following this. I made a twrp backup using 2.5.0.0 and I got a bunch of .WIM files.
7-Zip recognizes those and opens them to have a .ext4 file. However every ext browser and mounter (in windows) I've tried can't seem to browse them. I tried renaming them zip, but I'm guessing I'm doing something wrong.

With old CWM releases, my backups were tars which were easily browsable.

Am I missing something?

Thanks!

uberamd · Jul 17, 2013

eldamobo said:
Sorry I'm not following this. I made a twrp backup using 2.5.0.0 and I got a bunch of .WIM files.
7-Zip recognizes those and opens them to have a .ext4 file. However every ext browser and mounter (in windows) I've tried can't seem to browse them. I tried renaming them zip, but I'm guessing I'm doing something wrong.

With old CWM releases, my backups were tars which were easily browsable.

Am I missing something?

Thanks!

I know this is an old post, but it's the first Google result.

What you want to do is rename the .wim file to .tar.gz, then extract the file (command line is tar -xvzf filename.tar.gz). If you look at the TWRP logs it indicates that it uses tar to create the archive file.

eldamobo · Jul 17, 2013

uberamd said:
I know this is an old post, but it's the first Google result.

What you want to do is rename the .wim file to .tar.gz, then extract the file (command line is tar -xvzf filename.tar.gz). If you look at the TWRP logs it indicates that it uses tar to create the archive file.

Thanks uberamd. I'll give this a shot. I guess I should have checked the logs. Tar would be great!

jabi_james · Oct 18, 2013

hi there.. i made backup too.. now i want to bring back the boot.img and recovery.img..

most of guys said to me the " boot.emmc.win " is the stock boot.img.. but this one is 16 MB and other boot.img i saw till now are 6 MB..

and how can i restore the stock recovery? does the backup contain the recovery?

any idea?

3c · Dec 26, 2013

N5 TWRP Backups

I made a backup with TWRP, and copied the .WIN files to my PC. Tried renaming those to .ZIP or .tar.gz, but 7zip could not open either of those!?

Are you guys sure the backups are actual zip or tar/gz files?

EDIT: Nevermind, I renamed to .tar and it opened. I suppose compression is not enabled by default

Except the data.ext4 is splitted in two files: data.ext4.win000 and data.ext4.win001 and renaming either of those to .tar, .zip or .tar.gz doesn't help

eldamobo · Dec 27, 2013

Just a guess here but what if you concatenated the files together?

If you can post the details from the twrp log that would also probably help.

3c · Dec 27, 2013

eldamobo said:
Just a guess here but what if you concatenated the files together?

If you can post the details from the twrp log that would also probably help.

Yes concatenating can help however all those .WIN files are either .tar files or .tar.gz (if compression is enabled). That's quite simple in the end, except that 7zip doesn't always recognize the format properly. If I open the system.win file, it only shows about 60MB of files, whereas the whole .win file is 600MB uncompressed, hence I was confused about the format.

I've been able to update my app to read those .tar, .tar.gz and extract any file from it now

Pretty cool!

VIPLightning · Jan 4, 2014

Be advised though, for some reason when I rename the backup to .tar or .tar.gz for twrp 2.6.3.1, it doesn't want to open or extract. I don't know if it's only happening only for t-mobile sgs3 or the developer removed the ability for us to do it. But I did revert it back 2.6.3.0 and it's working fine for me. Thought I want to just throw it out there.

-VIPLightning

3c · Jan 4, 2014

VIPLightning said:
Be advised though, for some reason when I rename the backup to .tar or .tar.gz for twrp 2.6.3.1, it doesn't want to open or extract. I don't know if it's only happening only for t-mobile sgs3 or the developer removed the ability for us to do it. But I did revert it back 2.6.3.0 and it's working fine for me. Thought I want to just throw it out there.

-VIPLightning

That's interesting. Which app are you using to open those TWRP backups? Asking because I found out that many extractor are unable to open those in the first place! 7zip for example showed me a 80MB content while the file was 600MB! And I'm using a very old 2.6.0.0 TWRP, so I got to try this last version out

Would you mind trying Android Tuner Free, last update allows opening those .tar and .tar.gz files, but got to rename the TWRP backup to either of those first. It won't open the tar inside the gz file, but you should be able to extract it and then open it

If you don't have the time, I can understand, but hopefully you still have a 2.6.3.1 backup file around?

VIPLightning · Jan 8, 2014

3c said:
That's interesting. Which app are you using to open those TWRP backups? Asking because I found out that many extractor are unable to open those in the first place! 7zip for example showed me a 80MB content while the file was 600MB! And I'm using a very old 2.6.0.0 TWRP, so I got to try this last version out

Would you mind trying Android Tuner Free, last update allows opening those .tar and .tar.gz files, but got to rename the TWRP backup to either of those first. It won't open the tar inside the gz file, but you should be able to extract it and then open it If you don't have the time, I can understand, but hopefully you still have a 2.6.3.1 backup file around?

I should have no problem giving it a try. Yeah I deleted my backup. I'll go ahead and update the recovery when I get a chance to later on. Then I'll make another backup

And the program I used for extracting and opening was WinRAR. Everytime I tried to, the 2.6.3.1 backup would always come up as corrupted or damaged.

EDIT: So I tried out your app. Indeed the explorer does work.

Thanks so much. Even though first it took some time, I was able to get to my stuff. But it was worth it. I've never seen an app that can actually do so much. Thanks again.

-VIPLightning

yakovpol · Mar 4, 2014

What are WIN files?

Along with win and md5 files TWRP creates recovery.log file. If you look inside this file, you can see the full log of what TWRP has done. There you can notice that win file with the boot partition is in fact a result of the dd command, so that's a bit-to-bit copy of the boot partition, sometimes named as .img file.
Other partition win files are tar files. If you used compression, you got .tar.gz files.
So .win files are raw partition data, .tar, or .tar.gz files. See recovery.log

ts1506 · Mar 12, 2014

If you use compression in TWRP, just rename the .win to .tar.gz

i.e data.ext4.win to data.ext4.tar.gz , then use tar -xvzf , extracts perfectly fine.
I used this to extract my apps from a TWRP backup just now.

Extracting/Browsing a TWRP Backup?

Senior Member

Senior Member

Senior Member

Senior Member

Senior Member

Senior Member

Senior Member

Senior Member

Senior Member

Senior Member

Senior Member

Senior Member

Senior Member

Senior Member

Senior Member

VIPLightning

Guest

Senior Member

VIPLightning

Guest

Senior Member

Inactive Recognized Developer

Similar threads

Top Liked Posts