What does a factory reset actually do?

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I am wondering how it really works and why for example if the device software seems broken. All it takes is a simple restore and it’s expected that it will all fix everything?

Also how come the restore partition never gets corrupted and is able to install the brand new software again and get it all working?

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5 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Depends on the particulars of the device – it can mean any of a huge list of of things. The idea of course it the device matches the way it would have been after manufacture, but that can be achieved a lot of different ways depending on the device.

You mention a restore partition – for devices that rely on something like that the idea generally is that there’ll be a copy of the baseline setup of the device and it can be copied over the “real” partition to reset everything to how it was.

> how come the restore partition never gets corrupted

It’s certainly possible for it to have problems too, but in the scheme of using a restore partition generally the restore partition is either read-only (IE: nothing can every edit it directly) or at least the system is set up to rarely if ever touch it.

For the most part the point of factory resets is either to wipe personal data (like when selling a laptop to someone else) or try to fix a hard to debug issue that’s likely the result of a bug (so: something in the software made changes to the “real” data in a way that was unintended and is causing issues).

In either of those cases: a partition that by design isn’t being changed after it’s left the factory isn’t going to develop problems.

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