Hey guys i was wondering if there was any way to erase the userdata(both from internal and external sd cards) from boot without reseting the Android smartphone.
yes, if you boot into recovery mode there should be an 'erase internal storage' option. You might need to use 'erase data' and or 'erase cache' as well but wait for seph to confirm.
In recovery mode i saw these options : -wipe data/factory reset -wipe cache partion So if i use the wipe data/factoey reset option will it erase all the data from both the sd cards or just the internal sd card? And what is cache partion?
If you do a factory reset, it will return the phone to its original state as first purchased. Things the device will usually not remove are your phone contacts, and non-removable app). Everything else that you or the system had added in the course of using the phone will be wiped out (e.g. updates, cache, removable app, etc.). The files on your SD Micro will not be effected. You would however want to rescue anything you'd store on the phone memory that could be important or too much hassle to restore later on, e.g. large OBB files from installing .apk not directly downloaded from the app store. That you can do by accessing your phone using USB to PC, and backing up the 'ANDROID' folder containing the 'DATA' and 'OBB' folder. Apps you'd downloaded from the app store will be deleted during the process, but far as I know, you can recover it through re-downloading from the store. Unfortunately on this part I can't be certain what happen to purchased app, though I could safely assume it will be recoverable without needing repurchasing. There maybe some app related files you might want to backup as well, though that's not necessary as you could always re-download them again. As for phone and e-mail contact numbers, it might be wise to back it up to your SIM card or take notes. Of cause e-mail handling app and chat apps such as Whatsapp will be wiped out from its memory, thus you'd have to re-input your details or re-install later on. Apps such as Whatsapp has a backing up feature to allow you to secure past chats, you might want to do so if necessary, else its not mandatory. E-mails can be restored upon re-configuring your phone, so no problem there. You mean 'cache partition'? Cache is a temporary memory of whatever information you or your phone system stored to enable it access that information faster should in future is needed. As 'cache partition', I'd rather quote someone's statement on that to avoid making mistake in my explaination. If you need further explanation, I'll leave it to Seph or Loonylion. [quote author=androidcentral.com] cache partition: /cache is basically just a temp directory used by the system for downloading temporary files it needs when installing apps and such. wiping the cache partition generally will have no noticeable effect to the end user. It also doesn't really free up any space either, because it's mounted as a separate partition, and thus always uses the same amount of the total disk storage space. Generally, if you're rooted and installing ROMs or other mods in recovery, it's always recommended to wipe both the /cache and the dalvik cache at minimum before installing anything. This is good advice and I certainly don't disagree with it, but chances are that it's actually the clearing of the dalvik that is most important. If you're phone is running sluggish, clearing these 2 is also a quick and easy step you can take to see if rebuilding the app optimization files can improve performance. dalvik cache: /data/dalvik-cache directory that can be found on typical Android devices. When you install an application on Android, it performs some modifications and optimizations on that application's dex file (the file that contains all the dalvik bytecode for the application). It then caches the resulting odex (optimized dex) file in the /data/dalvik-cache directory, so that it doesn't have to perform the optimization process every time it loads an application. When your phone starts up, the Dalvik Virtual Machine looks at all your apps and frameworks, and creates a tree of dependencies which is stored in the dalvik-cache. This allows applications to run in an optimised state (and explains why your phone takes longer to boot up after applying a new rom, it�s rebuilding the cache.) [/quote]
Factory reset wont affect both the micro sd cards? So isn't there any way to erase all media files(pictures and videos) by doing a factory reset?
no, the only way to do that it is to either format the sd card/internal memory from the settings menu or search for the files you want to delete in windows
If your intention is to delete picture and video files, can't you just do it manually, one at a time? Doing a factory reset will be a lot of trouble. You'll end up having to re-install, re-add, re-download, re-update, a lot of stuff (depending on how much stuff you have in your phone to begin with). Or.... alternatively, try using the phone's PC Suite. Some phones such as Samsung and Nokia (now known as Windows Phone) has a supporting PC Suite that can help you handle removable files; contact list, chat & email back up, music, images, video, etc. Try using that instead of trying factory reset. If all else fails to remove, say a stubborn corrupted file, only then you try factory reset. Again, no, the SD Micro will not be effected by doing memory cache removal or factory reset. If you want to clean the SD Micro, remove it from your phone, and clean it by inserting to your PC and do a reformat.
