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Comment by Scoundreller | Hacker News Reader

How do you backup your phone after you smash your screen?

Same way you do if your drive fails in your computer. You don’t. You should make regular backups before anything happens to your device.

Somewhat tangentially, it’s actually a fairly smooth process to pull data off a MacBook when the keyboard/graphics/touchpad are dead.

A friend dropped a drink through his and it looked very dead. Turns out with a thunderbolt cable, another Mac, and his disk crypto password & he had easy access so his old disk. Don’t ask me how, but kudos Apple.

Disk encryption usually employs some form of PBKDF to turn the user’s passphrase into a key that’s usable for crypto. If you know the specific derivation function and the passphrase, unlocking the storage device on another machine is a matter of setting up the software. When both ends of this are Apple machines (one end: the damages machine running in target disk mode; other end: a working machine) the key derivation is taken care of by definition, requiring the user to merely enter the passphrase.

The question I have is how did he get the "dead" machine into target disk mode? That normally requires a reboot and a specific key chord on the keyboard.

I'd try sticking a USB keyboard into it. Hopefully USB ports aren't dead.

The older MacBooks with Firewire had target disk mode where you pressed T on boot, and the MacBook then acted as an external disk to the other host Mac. Very useful for backing stuff up!

No clue how you'd do that with the newer ones (dongles?) or with a dysfunctional keyboard though...

How do you backup your phone after you smash your screen?

Isn't that kind of like asking "How do you put your seat belt on after you've been knocked unconscious in a car accident?"

No, more like: "How do I get my luggage out of the trunk after a brick goes through the windshield and smashes the trunk lever?"

Only if your luggage can be effortlessly duplicated and there’s a setting to automatically copy your trunk luggage to secure storage on a regular basis.

You pull down the back seat and get into the trunk from inside the car of course. Snark aside, if your phone is dead, the only way to get data out of it will be to get to the "disk" on the device, if that's even possible.

Isn't that more like trying to get your car fixed after a rock flies into your windshield?

No, getting your screen fixed would be like getting your car fixed.

Not at all. Of course it's good to back up a phone regularly, but even if you've done so it would always be preferable to back up one last time and then restore your replacement device from that backup.

This isn't always possible, but if the storage is undamaged, it would be ideal from a continuity perspective.

I rather the device is secure and you protect your device better, than to have a security hole so that your can backup your device after being careless.

Agree 100%. Reminds me of the adage: your lack of planning isn’t my emergency.

But it's certainly possible to do it securely if that eventuality was planned for.

I'd wager this is a fairly fringe case that isn't worth the trade off. If you don't have a recent backup and absolutely need the data, take it to a third party repair shop/buy a screen from ifixit/data recovery lab, connect a new display, enter your PIN, back it up.

That’s an event a backup is supposed go help with. You’re talking no longer about backup, but restore.

I keep an old iphone 5 with a busted screen for this reason - I would dispose of it but there’s no way to clean up the data. What’s that you say, it’s encrypted so the data looks like noise? Welp TFA says that’s not a problem since the screen broke a while ago, far prior to the latest ios release. Which prompts an interesting thought, how long will this current twilight last?

Widlarize[1] it. That tends to delete the data beyond any hope of recovery.

[1] http://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/the-widlar-izer!/

USB keyboard: https://www.apple.com/shop/product/HFD02LL/A/belkin-secure-w...

Is a confirmation required if the device has connected before?

Yes if it has been more than 1 hour

You replace the screen, enter passcode and do a backup, easy. Dont worry, Apple is hard at work implementing parts blacklists and soon wont allow 3rd party technicians screen replacements, because fraud or something. Oh, and Apple doesnt repair/recover broken devices, but they will gladly "upgrade" you to a new phone for only 599, or swap your broken one for a refurb.

> Dont worry, Apple is hard at work implementing parts blacklists

Source?

We get iPhone repairs out of Apple very often - If we mention it's urgent they'll swap it for a refurb, which is a good thing: It's allowed me to be in-and-out in 15 minutes versus dropping an iPhone off and picking it up the next day.

We have a business account - I've not broken my personal iPhone in years so I can't speak as a consumer. I did have a MacBook Pro 15" keyboard (pre-butterfly) fail WAY out of warranty and they replaced that for free too. Maybe I'm lucky, or maybe Apple aren't so bad to deal with after all?

> Apple doesnt repair/recover broken devices

Except for the fact they do ? https://support.apple.com/iphone/repair/service

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