It's not you, HTC EVO 4G. It's me. There comes a time when you realize it's time to say goodbye, and that time is now. No, don't make this any harder.
So, you've decided for one reason or another to trade in or sell your EVO 4G, most likely for the sexy new HTC EVO 3D strumpet you've been eyeing like a hawk for the past few weeks. But one of the lingering problems you may worry about is just how to get all your data erased so that the new owner doesn't have it.
With the stock EVO 4G ROM and a few minutes of work, you can erase most traces that you and your phone ever shared memories.
First off, I am going to suggest you back up everything from your old EVO to your computer, as about 35 minutes from now you might have a change of heart or realize you lost something (such as all the data on your phone).
Step 1: Erase the SD card (and fill it back up again)
The SD card is where all your pictures, videos, and any apps you moved there are stored. Several applications may have been writing to it without you knowing, so it's pretty important to wipe this out.
Connect your HTC EVO 4G to your computer, mount as a disk drive, go to that drive, and delete everything on it. Please verify that you're on your phone's drive and not somewhere else before you start deleting things or you might just end up toasting your computer's operating system. Alternately (in Windows at least) you can right click the drive and choose Format.
In general this is probably enough to stop an unmotivated hacker, but it's still possible to recover deleted files and formatted SD card contents, so for peace of mind copy some large files or directories onto the SD card. The object is to fill the SD card up completely with junk so any data you had there would be overwritten. Then delete those files so the new owner doesn't have a completely full SD card of junk.
Step 2: Factory reset
Boot the phone into recovery after powering it off by pressing and holding the volume down button and the power button until you see the phone start to do something. What should happen is you boot into a menu that will have 5 options, one of which is clear storage.
Highlight this using the volume controls to move up or down, and select it by pressing the power button. After this is selected, you should have reasonably removed most evidence that the EVO was ever your phone.
Keep in mind however that it's possible an application stored some data about you in an area that was not cleared by either the format, the overwrite, or the clear storage. If you feel like you're selling to a spy, your best bet it to shred the phone.
For most, however, this should remove all your contacts, pictures, email accounts / passwords, logins, etc.
IMPORTANT: If you have previously partitioned your card for Darktremor Apps2SD, you will need to re-partition it to remove applications and data that may be sitting on the SD-EXT partition (even if it is no longer in use).
Step 1: Erase the SD card (and fill it back up again)
Most things I’ve seen say that the data has to be copied over and erased 7 times before it is really gone. It may take more than that these days.
I know that I’ve used disk utilities to recover lost data after formatting a hard drive. It is amazing how much of it survives. Personally, I wouldn’t be willing to let someone have one of my SD cards unless I knew them well.
Even though I have flashed new roms and completely wiped…I still see my name under phone identity in the settings.
When you write once over it (say with a movie), for the average person it’s gone, going a level deep requires specialized hardware. If an intelligence agency gets it and wants to extract something there’s a possibility they still can.
Softwarewise it’s probably gone, spy wise, it’s still recoverable. This is why the government shreds hard drives
Also, unless I am mistaken, a windows format only runs a verify on each sector (read) and then erases the directory structure, meaning that other than the folders
to get that removed you have to do a RTN reset, which involves knowing your MSL, and will render your phone into an out of the box state (you’ll need to key in an MSL to start programming it / may require reprogramming by Sprint to get it back working). I was going mostly for removing pictures and documents.
Google “RTN Reset EVO” if you need to remove that, since it potentially bricks a phone, it’s not something I really wanted to write about.
also, fyi: http://www.wipeyourdata.com/secure-data-wiping/how-to-securely-wipe-data-on-usb-thumb-drive/
according to them 1 pass is enough to erase data entirely on SD/MMC or solid state media – their quote is “you cannot safely erase one file, but you can safely erase the whole disk”
Great info, thanks a lot.
Danger: If you’re using a Mac and you think you have dragged everything into your Trash Can, you have really just created a new folder on the SD card called .Trashes and moved all those files into it. Be sure to empty the trash while still connected via USB.
The Mac Finder tends to create many such “.” folders when you use a Mac to mount your phone as a USB storage device. Note that folders whose names begin with a period are invisible to Macs unless you change some default settings.
You can however see these folders using certain ROMs’ built-in File Explorer, Astro, Root Explorer or of course a good old fashioned terminal emulator session.
Hey Devo4g, do you know if the mac can format an EVO SD card and then overwrite it? Have never used an EVO on a Mac as all my ADB setup is on PCs
Also, if you know, is the Mac format destructive (writes data to SD on format) or passive (does a quick read and then writes a file allocation table)
thanks!@
This could possibly be a better option. I did a full backup of my 4G (Titanium + sd card contents), did a factory reset of the phone, bypassed the registration, and downloaded Shredroid.apk from the company’s website. After installing it, I did a full wipe of the free space in the phone as well as the sd card. It took about an hour or so, so I’m guessing it did a good job. Here’s the market’s link:
https://market.android.com/details?id=ch.ethz.infsyssec.sddroid
Maybe a real Mac expert can weigh in here, but all I know is on most recent installs of the MacOS there is a utility in the Applications..Utilities folder called “Disk Utility”. If you launch this while the phone is connected as USB storage, you should have no problem erasing and/or re-partitioning the SD card media.
There are many ways to overwrite supposedly free space to make *really* sure the data is not recoverable. A 3rd party utility that allows you to overwrite the freed-up space *at the time of deletion* is probably more reliable than the method proposed above.
[oops- see a couple posts further down for my response]
I just did the ##RTN# reset while rooted and s-off, and it worked, done in like 5 minutes. rebooted back into the phone, double checked the phone identity and my name and phone# were wiped. though if you do this, it will want to boot right into the hands free activation (similar to the one used on the 3D) I just hit cancel and then skipped and cancelled out of the google registration to check the settings. as with everything you do, there is always a risk of bricking, but it did work for me.
I have erased my evo doing this same process about for times now and every time I turn my phone back on all the same app’s are there. The main reason I wanted to erase all the data from my evo is because I need to run the new software update and cant because I had rooted the phone. Now every time I try to install the update the phone doesn’t take it. What else can I do to erase the superuser permissions from my evo? Please hlep!!!
If I backup my contacts through Titanium and run this method of wiping the data off my phone will I still be able to retrieve my contacts. My phone is just getting loaded up with junk and I want to clear it out and start over and was wondering if this was the best method. If not, are there any other methods that are more efficient? Thank you in advance for any help anyone can give me.