Extracting Contacts.cdb from Backup.arc file Symbian S60

[Michael.mo...@gmail.com]

Having had this problem recently myself heres how I went about solving
it:

Copy your backup.arc file to your PC

Download parse backup from http://www.x-ren.com/parsebackup.html

Save it to the same directory as your backup.arc file and run it.

You'll get a whole batch of memory blocks labeled Block-0 through to
Block-XXX. it may take some time depending on how big your backup.arc
file is.

Normally media (mp3s images etc will be upfront ie low Block no.s
contacts calendar etc will be up the back).

You can identify some of the media files by using the file command
under cygwin if you have it.
(At the bash prompt $ file Blo* > filetypes.txt) and you'll have a
list of files if they can be identified, normally it picks up mp3s and
jpg's fine but for other things you'll need GREP.

To identify your contacts.cdb file use grep or wingrep to search for
replicationcount and it will be in one of the files. take note of the
block no. if you have a lot of contacts it will be split over multiple
consecutive files. I had 230 or so contacts in two files. Block-141
and Block-142

Once you have identified the files concatenate them I used cat under
cygwin make your you use the >> pipe to append each successive file.

The commands I used were; again under cygwin $cp Block-141
Contacts.cdb
$ cat Block-142 >> Contacts.cdb

Now all your contacts are in one file, but there are still things to
do if you want to make them readable.

You will need a hex editor.

Open Contacts.cdb in your hex editor search for 50 00 00 BE 0E 00 10

Delete everything before this point and save the file.

To open the Contacts.cdb file and export it you can use Noki or the
Symbian Emulator.

I used the emulator because at this time Noki does not export Vcards
correctly for S60 V3 phones.

When I export them from the emulator, It uses the fullname and
correctly place the first and surname as well as using Tell;Cell;Phone
number as opposed to Home and work which noki uses.

Just a preference thing on my part. Noki was pretty impressive,

[hZ]

hi, Michael,

Thanks for providing this detailed contacts recovering tip :)

> When I export them from the emulator, It uses the fullname and
> correctly place the first and surname as well as using Tell;Cell;Phone
> number as opposed to Home and work which noki uses.

.cdb is not an open format (it's in Symbian Database format). Noki
just does the best to extract number, email, address etc from the
file and it also tries to guess what the field means.

p.s. Noki v1.7 will support .arc and mass storage in .nbu. So the porcess
to extract file from sd card will be less painful.

Thanks and Best Regards,
Abrash Han
http://nokisms.googlepages.com

[asia...@gmail.com]

Thanks for all the useful sharing. I have run into problems that I'll
need to restore as much as I can from the backup.arc. (after upgrading
n73 to v4 firmware, I couldn't restore from memory card)

Can I know how I could identify the SMS database and read it or export
it back to my N73?

On Jul 15, 7:17 am, hZ <abrash....@gmail.com> wrote:
> hi, Michael,
>
> Thanks for providing this detailed contacts recovering tip :)
>
>  > When I export them from the emulator, It uses the fullname and
>  > correctly place the first and surname as well as using Tell;Cell;Phone
>  > number as opposed to Home and work which noki uses.
> .cdb is not an open format (it's in Symbian Database format). Noki
> just does the best to extract number, email, address etc from the
> file and it also tries to guess what the field means.
>
> p.s. Noki v1.7 will support .arc and mass storage in .nbu. So the porcess
> to extract file from sd card will be less painful.
>
> Thanks and Best Regards,
> Abrash Hanhttp://nokisms.googlepages.com
>
>
>
> Michael.montey.Lam...@gmail.com wrote:
> > Having had this problem recently myself heres how I went about solving
> > it:
>
> > Copy your backup.arc file to your PC
>

> > Download parse backup fromhttp://www.x-ren.com/parsebackup.html

> > Just a preference thing on my part. Noki was pretty impressive,- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[hZ]

hi, Asiayeah,

SMS in .arc file is about 1KB in size. And SMS should start with '69 3C 00 10 68 3C'
or view in Ultra Edit 'h<..h<'

In the .arc file, they are located in c:/private/1000484b/Mail2/. (The sub folders are
quite complicated. looks like kindof database. It's clear that Nokia has done some hash
functions to speed up the exploring of the content).

I'm not sure if the phone allow directly writing of the folder c:/private. But there's some
tool can perform this task.

p.s. Noki v1.7 will support .arc compleately (both normal .arc, gF .arc and .arc in the .nbu file)

Thanks and Best Regards,
Abrash Han
http://nokisms.googlepages.com