Recovering the Google I/O Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 on OSX

Short Story


Several days after an OTA update to Honeycomb, my Google I/O Galaxy Tab crashed and went into a constant reboot state. These are the steps I used to recover. Note that this will delete all your personal data in the /data directory

1. Download fastboot, you will need this tool to get to the recovery screen. Unzip it and make sure it is executable: 
   
   
   

   chmod 755 fastboot-mac
   

   
   
2. Put the Tab into recovery mode by holding the Power button and Volume Down. The screen should look like this: 
   
   
   
   
   
3. Select USB by clicking on Volume Down, click on Volume Up to confirm. Plug the Tab into your computer
4. Download recovery.zip and unzip it
5. Fastboot the Tab (I used the parameters from here):
   
   

   ./fastboot-mac -p 0x0700 -i 0x0955 boot recovery.img
   

   
   
6. On the Tab, use the Volume control to a factory reset. This will reformat /data — note that all your data will be deleted.
   
   
   
7. Reboot the Tab.

Long Story

I tried a number of methods to recover the Tab without losing data. I tried to use Droid Basement's Guide to recover the Tab, but I was stymied by /data. When the Tab booted using fastboot, the /data directory was mounted read only.  I tried mounting /data rw numerous times via adb shell but every time I tried to write to /data it immediately reverted to a ro state. Reformatting /data seemed to the remaining choice.

If you want to do more with the Galaxy Tab, I highly recommend Droid Basement for hacks and images.


UPDATE 4/19/2012

If you need to recover files, you can used the Clockwork Recovery image instead of the stock recovery image.

./fastboot-mac -p 0x0700 -i 0x0955 boot recovery-cwm_4.0.0.4-sam-tab-10.1.img

Mount the /data directory from the Clockwork Recovery meny and navigate to the directory containing the files you want to retrieve. You can then use adb from the Android SDK to retrieve the files.

./adb pull /data/media/DCIM/Camera/20120415_191707.mp4