Guide?

obsanity · Apr 26, 2012

A friend of mine has Droid 3 on Verizon. I'm want to know what I need to do to flash a recovery on it so I can backup and flash roms on it. I'm not sure if I need a custom bootloader for it aswell. I found this thread with recovery as a sticky but it doesn't have much explanations in it. I also see you guys don't have a sticky with a guide anywhere besides just the one click root.
Can anyone point me in a direction?
Thank you.

slayer621 · Apr 26, 2012

On my phone so I can't give links. But you need safestrap. It's a bootstrap that will essentially allow your phone to boot into recovery even with the locked bootloader.

Safestrap is unique because it does not touch your primary system. You can back it up, but you flash everything to a "safe" system. It is ideal because no matter what you doing to your safe system, your primary will always be there. Even if you flash something that you know will brick your phone, all that will happen is that you won't be able to boot into your safe system. You can still load up your custom recovery and switch back to your primary system where you can download a different ROM.

Sent from my DROID3 using xda premium

obsanity · Apr 26, 2012

slayer621 said:
On my phone so I can't give links. But you need safestrap. It's a bootstrap that will essentially allow your phone to boot into recovery even with the locked bootloader.

Safestrap is unique because it does not touch your primary system. You can back it up, but you flash everything to a "safe" system. It is ideal because no matter what you doing to your safe system, your primary will always be there. Even if you flash something that you know will brick your phone, all that will happen is that you won't be able to boot into your safe system. You can still load up your custom recovery and switch back to your primary system where you can download a different ROM.

Sent from my DROID3 using xda premium

So how do I install this safe strap and where do I get it. I assume this will also let me flash a custom recovery like CWM?

slayer621 · Apr 26, 2012

Everything you need to know on installing safestrap can be found here

There are 2 versions. One is the standard version in the link, the other is a "tweaked" version found on the forums here. While the tweaked version has a few extra features, from what I've read, it can be a bit unstable. Use the version provided in the link.

crsdroid · Apr 26, 2012

Yeah what he said ^^^ then once u have the safestrap you just download the rom u want and flash it and your good to go

Sent from my XT883 using Tapatalk

obsanity · May 8, 2012

Ok. So far I can understand that the Moto Droid 3 has a locked boot loader which can not be unlocked. Correct?

I can understand using a bootstrap instead. Can someone explain what happens to your first system when the safe mode is turned on? Does it move the contents into the available internal SD card? What kind of memory is emmc? Also, I'm not clear on what is hijack. Is that just the initial hack from the apk on 1st system? I assume one can install it again in the 2nd system and mess things up.

Endoroid · May 8, 2012

obsanity said:
Ok. So far I can understand that the Moto Droid 3 has a locked boot loader which can not be unlocked. Correct?

I can understand using a bootstrap instead. Can someone explain what happens to your first system when the safe mode is turned on? Does it move the contents into the available internal SD card? What kind of memory is emmc? Also, I'm not clear on what is hijack. Is that just the initial hack from the apk on 1st system? I assume one can install it again in the 2nd system and mess things up.

The 1st system gets renamed to systemorig and is otherwise left untouched. /reinstall gets renamed to /system and becomes your safe mode system. Im not 100% on hijack but as I understand it, it quite literally hijacks the boot sequence at a certain point by killing all the processes and inserting its own in order to give us a custom recovery

Sent from my XT860 using xda premium

obsanity · May 8, 2012

OK. So why not just backup the original system and overwrite it? If the partition gets renamed why is there a need to keep it? Wouldn't deleting it give more room for roms? Is there even enough room for 2 partitions on the emmc?

Endoroid · May 8, 2012

The whole idea was that you keep your original system intact so you can still receive OTA updates. I've never had an issue with not having enough room for roms. They are only about 150 MB.

Many of us actually use this to dual boot. The common way is to have a stable rom on your /systemorig and test new roms on safe system.

There is a plain old bootstrap that installs regular old cwr and just overwrites /system. Everything should be compatible with it. I think I have a copy of it in my dropbox

The main reason for using safestrap(in my view) is that when you're messing around in safemode its next to impossible to brick your phone so bad you can't access recovery, since when it first boots it still boots from /system, and then redirects to the safe system. You should never have to fastboot flash your phone

Sent from my XT860 using xda premium

obsanity · May 8, 2012

So can you dual boot? And how do you boot into your orig 1st system? Don't you have to toggle the safe mode each time? Also, how much total room is there on emmc on D3?

bogdan_wrc · May 8, 2012

try here :
http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1436380

redsox985 · May 8, 2012

The internal SD memory is roughly 11GB. The phone stores which system was last booted and then you can backup and restore between them though the SafeStrap pre-boot recovery. Once you try it, it's really simple and effective. I was hesitant to leave old faithful bootstrap, but now that I'm on safestrap, I wonder why I ever hesitated.

obsanity · May 8, 2012

So the 1st system is simply copied to SD storage when the safe mode is turned on?

obsanity · May 8, 2012

Also, do I download ver 1.09 which says Droid 4? I have a Droid 3.

Endoroid · May 8, 2012

obsanity said:
So the 1st system is simply copied to SD storage when the safe mode is turned on?

It creates a backup of /system and /data when you switch between safe and non safe. And I think also /cache. However as I mentioned before it renames /system to systemorig.

Sent from my XT860 using xda premium

redsox985 · May 8, 2012

It runs off the /preinstall partition IIRC. You should/can DL the original from Hash's blog or get Rick's tweaked version from the Dev section.

obsanity · May 8, 2012

I downloaded and installed ver 1.0.8 because the other 1.0.9 said Droid 4.

Endoroid · May 8, 2012

obsanity said:
I downloaded and installed ver 1.0.8 because the other 1.0.9 said Droid 4.

I do believe that's the correct version. I'm running a tweaked version that includes a bash console and a redesigned ui but its kinda buggy atm so for now I would recommend the one you've got

One other thing I should point out, as this is a common mistake, the first time you switch to safe mode you HAVE to flash a rom. Because you're now running off the /preinstall, there is no safe mode rom yet. A lot of ppl switch to safe then boot up straight away and all you get is a blank screen cause you're booting...well nothing

Also I'm not sure if you have a rom in mind already but mavrom is the only gb rom that still gets updates. Everyone else is deving ics, however all ics roms are beta and have more or less the same bugs/missing features

Sent from my XT860 using xda premium

obsanity · May 8, 2012

Endoroid said:
I do believe that's the correct version. I'm running a tweaked version that includes a bash console and a redesigned ui but its kinda buggy atm so for now I would recommend the one you've got

One other thing I should point out, as this is a common mistake, the first time you switch to safe mode you HAVE to flash a rom. Because you're now running off the /preinstall, there is no safe mode rom yet. A lot of ppl switch to safe then boot up straight away and all you get is a blank screen cause you're booting...well nothing

Also I'm not sure if you have a rom in mind already but mavrom is the only gb rom that still gets updates. Everyone else is deving ics, however all ics roms are beta and have more or less the same bugs/missing features

Sent from my XT860 using xda premium

I just did it on his phone. All worked OK. Thanks for all your help. I'm used to the nexus devices which are much easier and straightforward. I installed nightly CM9 from hashcode. I'm not sure what works yet. Is there a better version of CM9 besides that one? He really wants ICS and CM.

slayer621 · May 8, 2012

All of the ICS roms are currently limited in the same way: no HW codecs, bluetooth on but not connected = loss of audio, etc. There's a thread here in the general section that compares all of the ICS roms. I would advise looking through it and deciding which one suits you best.

EDIT: to answer your question, the may 7 build of Hashcode's CM9 is a good build. They just brought back the theme engine so that opens up possibilities.

Sent from my DROID3 using xda premium

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