Sudden Death Syndrome?

[NRA_Bear]

I'm not exactly sure what to contribute what appears to be the fatal state of my dearly beloved to except SDS. I got my Note 2 as soon as it was available from Verizon. A few weeks ago the phone suicided itself while booting and did an unassisted factory reset. At the time I was running CM12.1 from 6/21/15 with the ND7 radio. It was a little buggy afterwards, so I flashed CM12.1 from 12/10 and it was ok for a while. I would get random reboots, but nothing that was irrecoverable. On 12/25 the dialer app randomly crashed and I stopped being able to receive/send calls even though SMS/MMS worked. So, I flashed CM12.1 12/24. That didn't fix the dialer so I did a full wipe of internal data and flashed 12/24 again. The phone was still buggy so I restarted while Google Play was still pulling down all my apps and backed up data at which point something very bad happened. I tried to do a factory reset from TWRP 2.8.7.0 and there were a bunch of files that it couldn't stat or delete. I pushed the 12/26 Cyanogen Recovery and tried a factory reset from there which also reported the same errors in the recovery log. So, I dug up the old trusty "I605_VRALJB_Restore.tar.md5.xz" and "sch-i605-16gb.pit" and ODINed them to bring my phone back to bone stock with the exception of the unlocked bootloader. I've never been so relieved to see that silly VZW splash screen. I did a factory reset from the stock ROM and then flashed TWRP and CM12.1 from 12/26. That finally fixed sending/receiving calls, but wifi was acting up and I wasn't getting Hangouts or Google Voice messages. So, I ODINed the MJ9 firmware. That put me in a recovery loop. Back to stock and this time I flashed the MJ9 firmware BEFORE CM12.1 and finally the ND7 radio. That worked for a couple days with random reboots and not getting Hangouts/GV messages unless I manually opened the Hangouts app. Then, today I heard my laptop across the room ding that I got a message in Hangouts and I opened the app on my phone to read it. And that's when everything went to Hell. The phone rebooted and after the Samsung Galaxy Note II splash screen it said that encryption of the device had failed, all user data would be lost, and I had to reset the phone by selecting "Reset Phone". Instead, I opted to pull the battery because I had never opted to encrypt my internal or external storage. The phone just hung when I booted it up, so I rebooted into TWRP. I tried to do a factory reset and here is a sample of some of the awesome error messages I was greeted with:

E:Unable to find partition size for '/boot'
E:Unable to find partition size for '/recovery'
E:Unable to find partition size for '/modem'
E:Primary block device '/dev/block/mmcblk0p16' for mount point '/data' is not present!
E:Unable to mount '/data'
E:Unable to recreate /data/media folder.
Updating partition details...
E:Unable to mount '/efs'

TWRP also reported that my internal and external storage were 0MB. I figured, "hey the phone still boots so all is not lost - I'll just nuke it back to stock again". Nope.

ODIN reported that everything with the flash process was fine:

<OSM> Enter CS for MD5..
<OSM> Binary Check MD5.. Do not unplug the cable..
<OSM> Please wait..
<OSM> Checking MD5 finished Sucessfully..
<OSM> Leave CS..
<ID:0/003> Odin engine v(ID:3.1100)..
<ID:0/003> File analysis..
<ID:0/003> SetupConnection..
<ID:0/003> Initialzation..
<ID:0/003> Get PIT for mapping..
<ID:0/003> Firmware update start..
<ID:0/003> SingleDownload.
<ID:0/003> boot.img
<ID:0/003> NAND Write Start!! 
<ID:0/003> cache.img
<ID:0/003> hidden.img
<ID:0/003> modem.bin
<ID:0/003> param.bin
<ID:0/003> recovery.img
<ID:0/003> system.img
<ID:0/003> tombstones.img
<ID:0/003> RQT_CLOSE !!
<ID:0/003> RES OK !!
<ID:0/003> Remain Port ....  0 
<ID:0/003> Removed!!
<OSM> All threads completed. (succeed 1 / failed 0)

However, the phone just hangs at the SNGII splash screen and if I boot into recovery it's TWRP instead of the expected stock recovery. As a test I tried to flash Philz Touch. ODIN reports success however TWRP is the recovery that loads. I've never used the "Re-Partition" or "Nand Erase All" options in ODIN but they're looking might tempting as last ditch efforts right meow. That probably means I'll need to restore efs if I can find a dusty NAND backup lying around my PC somewhere. If I'd realized the gravity of the situation I would have downloaded and run the eMMC brickbug app and opted for overnight shipping on the Nexus 6P I ordered yesterday. Reckon I'll be rocking old school Galaxy Nexus until next week. I had convinced myself that SDS was an international version only issue.
...

 

[Droid_Nut]

Sounds to me like your storage was flaking out, and now it died.

Sad to see a Note go down like that.

 

[shanusmarty]