1

I have a Asus Zenfone 2 and a few days ago it ran out of battery and turned off. Then after I charged it up and restarted it, it wouldn't turn on. It gets to the logo and the loading circle and just gets stuck there forever.

I can get into recovery, but can't do anything in recovery, because everything gives this error:

E:failed to mount /cache (invalid argument)

Trying to wipe cache, factory reset the phone, mount /system, flash a ROM from SD card, ADB sideload, everything gives the error multiple times. Factory reset formats /data fine, but when it gets to /cache, gives the error and aborts.

Same thing with fastboot. I tried to flash TWRP (I have stock recovery) and I tried to erase and format cache through fastboot, but both give this error:

FAILED (remote: 'Can not mount the necessary partition')

fastboot: error: Command failed

Is there anything I can do to format the phone or somehow rebuild the partitions without being able to flash anything via recovery or fastboot?

I don't know if tools like AFT or xfstk can do anything for me.

Edit: I don't think the EMMC chip is dead, because the recovery partition is still fine, I can still boot into recovery and when I did a factory reset, it formatted /data without any errors, only had an error when it started formatting /cache.

When I was looking for a solution to this problem, I read somewhere that sometimes when the device gets interrupted, like when it shuts down suddenly, to prevent data loss android would change permissions on the /cache partition to read only or something like that. This would certainly explain what happened to my phone. Just need to think of a way to access ADB shell on it to try to change permissions. Shell doesn't work in ADB sideload mode, that's the only ADB thing the stock recovery has. Is that a similar thing in fastboot by any chance?

Improve this question
7
  • fastboot format:ext4 cache (or without :ext4) will do the trick
    – alecxs
    Jun 30, 2019 at 7:20
  • That still gives the error remote: 'Can not mount the necessary partition'
    – Curiosity
    Jun 30, 2019 at 10:22
  • Try this three together fastboot oem start_partitioning fastboot oem wipe cache fastboot oem stop_partitioning
    – alecxs
    Jun 30, 2019 at 12:05
  • fastboot oem wipe cache gave this error: FAILED (remote: 'unknown OEM command'). Now I tried to do fastboot format cache again, this time it went through most of it successfully, then it got to the end and I still got this error: Writing 'cache' FAILED (remote: 'Can not mount the necessary partition').
    – Curiosity
    Jun 30, 2019 at 14:06
  • 1
    The possibility of dying eMMC can't be negated if you have used your device for a few years. Some cheap eMMCs have very limited E/P cycles before they wear out. Not necessarily all partitions dye at once, usually those with filesystems and mostly /data and /cache are affected because they are excessively written to. Better is to try factory firmware flashers if you can manage to provide. See this for some technical stuff.
    – Irfan Latif
    Jun 30, 2019 at 21:25

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
0

download TWRP for your device, then fastboot boot C:\adb\twrp-3.3.1-0-Z00*.img from twrp: adb shell from shell: mke2fs -t ext4 /dev/block/bootdevice/by-name/cache

Improve this answer
1
  • Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.
    – Andrew T. ♦
    Dec 1, 2021 at 2:49

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .