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?
In: Technology
About the first question: most times when you make changes to your software, for example by installing something or changing settings, those are applied incrementally, let’s say by adding a few files here and adding a line to a configuration file there, similar to how you’d edit a text document. Things can go wrong if you do this a lot, like files or lines in the configuration can be forgotten and just stay there as dead weight, or they can grow out of hand (imagine a long text document where you have a lot of references like “see page 25”, but then on page 25 it says “see page 58” and you have to follow the whole chain and maybe even go back and forth several times to find what you need).
A “factory reset” is usually much more coarse. There is a specific copy of everything how it should be by default and whatever is there just gets deleted and replaces with that. That’s usually a much easier way to clean up all the forgotten junk and messy references than trying to “untangle” them while keeping the information in place.
About your second question: restore partitions are usually read-only, or at least allow only very limited writing to install updates. It’s also usually only the manufacturer of the device that accesses them, so they know exactly how everything works and they are aware that corrupting anything there would be a huge problem, so they are extra diligent about anything they do related to the files there.
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