Wiping the Vox's drive? (factory defaulting doesn't?)

[Wigmaker]

Hi all,

Searched the forum but didn't find an answer so... anyone know how to format the Vox's drive? (Not asking how to do a factory default).

Note that factory defaulting does not actually wipe the Vox's drive (despite the fact that it says it does). I have tried the volume+ and power on default and the in-menu defaults, but all my personal files are still on the drive... (the home button and power on default doesn't work for me?)

I need to return my Vox, as from day one the battery has never lasted longer than four hours on a full charge. At first this was four hours of wireless usage, browsing, downloading etc. but now the Vox will not last longer than four hours even in airplane and silent mode, with application sync turned off and all irrelevant application processes stopped (i.e., anything at all that could drain the battery has been stopped/turned off). At one point I charged the Vox to full around 7 pm at night, left it in sleep mode with the above settings, and the battery was dead at 6 am in the morning...

This has made my Vox unreliable as an e-reader. The staff at my local Chapters assures me this is unusual and will switch my unit. For anyone else with issues like this, I've been told the bookstores will honour returns on the Vox until January 15th owing to the holidays, regardless of when it was bought.

Any info on how to zero the Vox's drive would be appreciated.

Thanks,
-WM

[hpulley]

Mine wouldn't even boot when I returned it so I had no chance to wipe it. I didn't really have data on it but I changed every password I had.

[Reader Paradice]

Originally Posted by Wigmaker

Hi all,

Searched the forum but didn't find an answer so... anyone know how to format the Vox's drive? (Not asking how to do a factory default).

Note that factory defaulting does not actually wipe the Vox's drive (despite the fact that it says it does). I have tried the volume+ and power on default and the in-menu defaults, but all my personal files are still on the drive... (the home button and power on default doesn't work for me?)

I need to return my Vox, as from day one the battery has never lasted longer than four hours on a full charge. At first this was four hours of wireless usage, browsing, downloading etc. but now the Vox will not last longer than four hours even in airplane and silent mode, with application sync turned off and all irrelevant application processes stopped (i.e., anything at all that could drain the battery has been stopped/turned off). At one point I charged the Vox to full around 7 pm at night, left it in sleep mode with the above settings, and the battery was dead at 6 am in the morning...

This has made my Vox unreliable as an e-reader. The staff at my local Chapters assures me this is unusual and will switch my unit. For anyone else with issues like this, I've been told the bookstores will honour returns on the Vox until January 15th owing to the holidays, regardless of when it was bought.

Any info on how to zero the Vox's drive would be appreciated.

Thanks,
-WM

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Could you not access the internal microSD card through the USB attached to your computer and then right click on the mounted icon...and then use the FORMAT to wipe everything out? I'm sure you could do that, as the Vox acts as a slave to the computer link.

[Wigmaker]

Probably could do that (haven't tried), but was mainly wondering if there is a 'true factory default' command out there that would return the drive to its original factory image.

You raise a good point tho, next time around I think I'll slave the Vox and copy the unaltered drive image for myself!

Do you think formatting the drive and returning it blank would be an issue? (what would be the difference between this and rooting within the context of the warranty?)

Thanks,
-WM

[hieronymos]

Do you want to delete all your data for privacy reasons or do you want to reset your Vox to factory because you rooted it?

If 1) just go into Settings - Storage - Unmount SD - Format SD (or do it on a PC, same thing) and Settings - Privacy - Factory Reset.
if 2) it's a very tight spot - took me 20 minutes to get it, but I returned a totally virgin Vox (my backlight bleeding had gotten worse). Power off, then power on until the green light blinks and immediately hit power again for 2 seconds or so. The green light will continue to blink. You're probably in some kind of recovery now, but the display won't work. I believe from there it is 2 times power and Volume Down and the thing should reset completely (apply the system image that is saved on the recovery partition). Anyhow, the Kobo recovery is more intelligent than the normal Android recovery - I guess just making trouble (pressing stuff in that screenless recovery) should make it kick in as well.

[Reader Paradice]

Originally Posted by Wigmaker

Probably could do that (haven't tried), but was mainly wondering if there is a 'true factory default' command out there that would return the drive to its original factory image.

You raise a good point tho, next time around I think I'll slave the Vox and copy the unaltered drive image for myself!

Do you think formatting the drive and returning it blank would be an issue? (what would be the difference between this and rooting within the context of the warranty?)

Thanks,
-WM

----------------------------------------------------------
.....I defer to hieronymos post below. Seems you should have no problems...

[hieronymos]

You can't break anything when you format the SD from a PC. No need to worry about that. The 'drive' (actually only one partition on the drive) that shows up on the PC is empty when you receive it and so you can make it empty for returns.

[Wigmaker]

Connected the Vox to my PC and formatted the drive with the Vox on USB transfer mode.

Turns out the Vox has a safe partition where the factory image resides, and blanking the main partition on boot prompts the image to get copied. So a primary SD format and factory default will zero the device.

So for any others trying the same thing: do what I described, or what hieronymos advises -- this is how one performs an actual 'drive zeroing' / factory default.

Cheers,
-WM

[hieronymos]

Aaaah! Formatting the SD is of course easier than fiddling around with the power button in order to force a full reset. Good to know!

[oldyellr]

Originally Posted by Wigmaker

Do you think formatting the drive and returning it blank would be an issue? (what would be the difference between this and rooting within the context of the warranty?)

Thanks,
-WM

What does the warranty say? Can you return it for a full refund without reason? I think you can within 30 days, but if it's just a blank "disk", there's no evidence of what might have gone wrong.

[hpulley]

It's a hardware only warranty anyways. What software is or isn't on there shouldn't matter at all.

[ne0rmatrix]

Hey all. Got caught by that sleep of death bug. Just tried the full factory reset. Said it applied most recent update. The Nov 17 one. It booted up fine and downloaded ebooks. Rebooted and gonna see if i still have sleep bug.

Will report back and see if a full reset fixed it. Oh btw i rooted device before original update. I think this may have caused issues. I unrooted before formatting internal sdcard and ejected external sdcard. I then did the full reset.

[oldyellr]

Originally Posted by hpulley

It's a hardware only warranty anyways. What software is or isn't on there shouldn't matter at all.

Yes, but wouldn't the user be responsible if (s)he installed software that damaged the hardware?

[hpulley]

Originally Posted by oldyellr

Yes, but wouldn't the user be responsible if (s)he installed software that damaged the hardware?

Damaged the hardware by what, overheating or something? Must be rare that software can damage hardware. Poorly designed system that allows for that which is of course... a hardware problem from the start to the end.

[northface]

Thanks to Hieronymos in Post #5 for saving my Kobo Vox from becoming a brick!