I was flashing a new system image onto my phone, everything was going great—until it wasn’t. I had to wipe my data as the final step, so I typed in the usual command: fastboot -w. But instead of the phone doing what it was supposed to do, I got hit with an error that made me stop in my tracks.
It said: “FAILED (remote: ‘Cannot erase userdata while a snapshot update is in progress’).”
This is the last command that should give you trouble. If you’re seeing the same error, here’s the thing though—don’t reboot your device yet. Trust me, doing that might get your phone stuck in a bootloop, or worse, you might even brick it.
Let’s go through a few ways to fix this. Try each one out and see which one works for you.
Table of Contents
Solution 1: Check Your USB Setup
This one might seem simple, but sometimes the problem is the USB cable or port you’re using.
- Try using a different USB cable.
- Plug it into a USB 2.0 port on your computer (the black one), instead of USB 3.0 (the blue one).
- Sometimes, these small tweaks are all you need to get things moving again.
Solution 2: Format Data from FastbootD Mode
If the usual Fastboot commands aren’t working, you might need to switch to FastbootD Mode.
- Boot into FastbootD by typing: fastboot reboot fastboot.
- Then, try wiping data again using fastboot -w.
It’s just another way to give the system a nudge in the right direction.
Solution 3: Try Recovery Mode
If nothing else works, you can always try using Recovery Mode. You can get there by either:
- Using a hardware button combo to boot into Recovery Mode, or
- Waiting for the device to automatically boot into Recovery (this can take about 8-10 minutes).
- Once in Recovery Mode, try formatting the data again and see if it helps.
There’s no one-size-fits-all solution for this, but one of these methods should get you out of the woods.