What is ClockWorkMod and what will i get if i install it..

Many of you with a new android device might be wondering what is this CWM.

CWM stands for clock work mod a recovery program by Koushik Dutta. Its nothing but a program that runs at a level closest to the hardware (something like MS-DOS for a pc) on your android phone and will allow you to do some very basic tasks like backing up the full data on your phones operating system.

In simple terms it takes a snapshot of your phone and saves it in the sd card for future usage. You can use this backup in case you need to restore your phone to an earlier time. Its clone to Norton Ghost or Drive snapshot programs in windows. You might be familiar with system restore in your windows accessories. It does a similar(not exact) thing, simply restores your phone to an earlier date.

Those who want to know where it runs on and how its installed let me tell you something technical in this paragraph. Every processor requires a bootloader to run the initial startup when its powered on. Android devices are powered by ARM processors which on powering on will seek the bootloader to know what it must do next. The bootloader if uninterrupted will continue with normal boot if it isn’t interrupted with a special keypress or so. For example if the bootloader detects a button on startup it will enter into the code section for recovery program, something like (IF true THEN GOTO recovery) as in c programming. And this clockworkmod is one such recovery program. It does’nt need android files to be present so that it can run. When installed it replaces the stock recovery (2e or 3e recovery by default in your Galaxy ace ). Actually on installing what it does is it replaces your code section of recovery with the custom made program codes. The result is that next time when you press the combination for recovery you’ll enter into clockworkmod recovery.

What you can do with CWM

Iam not going into details or screenschots as there are a plenty of them available on the internet.

See: http://www.addictivetips.com/mobile/what-is-clockworkmod-recovery-and-how-to-use-it-on-android-complete-guide/

Now let me just brief up what you can do with CWM

-Choose the backup menu to backup your phone state into sdcard. Of course you’ll need about 500-700mb space on sdcard for each back up separately , depending on the android os you are running.

-Choose the restore menu to restore your phone into a state previously saved on sdcard.

-Choose flash  zip from sd card to install a theme or  program or ROM which comes in the recovery flashable zip format.

-From advanced menu you can partition your sdcard, mount your sd card as usb storage, restore specific partitions and so on. Ill write about all partitioning and setting up a2sd soon.

Installing CWM

Now that you know what is CWM & the basic use of CWM go and install it from the following link

For Galaxy Ace>>

http://s.chinoyray.com/groups/samsung-galaxy-ace/forum/topic/recovery-official-clockworkmod-4-0-0-9/

or get it from the official website

http://www.clockworkmod.com/recovery_images.html

Find and click on Samsung Galaxy Ace (or whatever phone model available in the list which matches your android phone) Do not attempt to flash with a different phones recovery.

-Put the ClockworkmodeAce zip file on the sd card. Reboot into recovery.

(Power off your phone. Hold the home key pressed and power it on.Keep the home key pressed until the first Samsung logo shows and then you can release it. You ll get recovery menu.)

-Select apply zip from sdcard and choose the above zip file.

-Now reboot. Next time you start the recovery u’ll be taken to the CWM recovery menu.

-Now you can enjoy the advanced recovery features…
Navigate the CWM recovery menu via vol up/down, back button and home button to select.Touch screen wont work.

Some Extra Notes:

You must ensure atleast 50%battery while doing a backup/recovery via CWM.Do not attempt backup/restore until ur battery shows fully charged, in case your battery level is not showing correctly.(Or you may plug in your phone to ac charger too better avoid this.)

You can also intall CWM via ODIN by flashing the PDA tar  file containing CWM image. Its the easiest way to get back your phone to life (of course from a previously backed up image on sd card) if you ended up something wrong in installing a custom ROM or such and tampered your recovery image.

Although i used CWM to restore my stock GB ROM after flashing a custom ROM, i could not restore and ended in a bootloop.But i was successful in backing up and restoring most of the custom roms via CWM.(You can always flash back your stock ROM including stock recovery via ODIN, in case you wanna claim warranty)

Warning:: ROM Manager is an android front-end program for clockwork mod. Its not yet supported with Galaxy ace, You’ll end up with a completely dead phone if you attempt to install ROM Manger and do backup/restore from ROM Manager on your galaxy ace.

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