Rooting/flashing/wiping order of operations

[ctshiner]

Hey everyone, I'm a new user and have done tons of research here about hacking my new droid x but I need just a little help before I go any further.

Basically, how do you wipe the phone and when are you supposed to do it in the process of rooting and installing a custom ROM? So far I have successfully rooted and made a nandroid backup. Was I supposed to do a wipe before I even rooted? Will it erase my backup image? How exactly do you perform a wipe?

I really want to do this whole process exactly right the first time, please help!

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[CD95YJ]

When flashing a custom rom you can go 1 of 2 ways. Rom manager is probably the easiest because it gives you the option to wipe data and cache before installing a rom, however not all roms are on rom manager. 2nd way is to download the rom from the web to your phone, reboot into clockwork recovery, go to advanced and mount the system. Go back to the main recovery menu and clear cache and wipe data from there. Then go to apply .zip from sd card and find the rom you downloaded. Select that rom and wait for it to flash. Once its done reboot the phone from the recovery menu and wait for everything to power up.

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[maderschramm]

I would NOT recommend what CD95YJ stated.

ROM Manager is VERY unreliable on the DX. I recommend ALL ROMS be installed from clockworkmod recovery manually.

A "wipe" of the phone is accomplished through an .sbf flash. I have a tutorial on that in my signature, that will wipe out all but your sdcard, so if you have nand backups from clockworkmod or apps backed up with titanium they will stay.

Wiping data and cache is recommended for all ROM installations - sometimes it doesn't work, sometimes you brick, sometimes it does work.

Data is your apps, so back those up before wiping data, cache is fine to clear, it's just like a browser's cache. You won't lose anything pertinent

 

[Big Fate]

I would NOT recommend what CD95YJ stated.

ROM Manager is VERY unreliable on the DX. I recommend ALL ROMS be installed from clockworkmod recovery manually.

A "wipe" of the phone is accomplished through an .sbf flash. I have a tutorial on that in my signature, that will wipe out all but your sdcard, so if you have nand backups from clockworkmod or apps backed up with titanium they will stay.

Wiping data and cache is recommended for all ROM installations - sometimes it doesn't work, sometimes you brick, sometimes it does work.

Data is your apps, so back those up before wiping data, cache is fine to clear, it's just like a browser's cache. You won't lose anything pertinent

+1.... This is how I flash roms, I found out Rom manager is no good...

 

[CD95YJ]

I know some say that rom manager is no good, but I am 4 for 4 with flashing roms without any issues. While it might not be the best option out there some have had success with it still making it an option. The only time I have had issues with my phone was when I downloaded darkslide 4.1 and put it on over 4.0 through clockwork.

I agree that clockwork is probably the safest way to flash a rom because you know that everything is cleared and fresh for the new rom, but you can have issues either way you run it if you try to flash a corrupt or incomplete file.

 

[ctshiner]

thanks for your help guys, after I figured it all out I settled on this procedure:

1. Stock restore using SBF
2. Root
3. Nandroid
4. Complete data/cache/darvik wipe using bootstrap
5. Install rom using bootstrap SDcard install option
6. Maybe another wipe/battery pull if I'm feeling sassy

This seems like a pretty foolproof way to be sure I'm always installed as the rom creator intended, correct?