Backup and Restore - Epic 4G Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

I read alot about wiping data in CWM3 and was wondering what that wipes and is it good to do periodically since it seems to be part of repair procedures. What gets wiped. Also what is the difference in backing up in CWM3 and My Backup Pro.
Thanks for helping us noob's learn.

When you wipe data/factory reset. You're clearing ALL the setup that had been done on the phone. So the next boot; it will act like it did when it was first taken out of the box.
Starting the tutorial and prompting to login or create a google account.
recovery backup is like an image of your phone; it is always best to use this when trying a theme or anything that could cause your phone to not boot. You can always go back into recovery and put your phone back into the state it was prior to the change (kind of like a restore point in windows)
the backup programs really just do apps their data and some system data but could not help you if a theme or kernel causes your phone to stop booting to android. This is more like copying files to a folder in windows and then copying them back when needed.
Either backups are good to have as they serve different purposes. ALWAYS backup your phone. It can save you much headaches later.
Hope that helped.

Related

[Q] Advanced ROM flashing techniques

I just learned how to root and flash ROM's for my evo a few days ago and I had a few questions now that I got the basics down.
1) Do I have to do a "data wipe, then cache, then Davlik" if I am just flashing a kernel and/or theme?
2) Is there a way to save NAND backups onto my computer so I have multiple versions of a rom/kernel combination?
3) Is there a way to save sense and all of my programs before I flash a ROM so that after I flash I don't have to type my username/password in all of my programs and reorganize my UI?
4) Are there any useful tips out there to make this process easier?
nitrosilver said:
I just learned how to root and flash ROM's for my evo a few days ago and I had a few questions now that I got the basics down.
1) Do I have to do a "data wipe, then cache, then Davlik" if I am just flashing a kernel and/or theme?
No you do not have to wipe data cache and dalvik for themes and kernels. some may say they advice it but personally i have literally flashed them hundreds of time with out and never had an issue. the exception is if the dev says you should flash ... always listen to the dev.
2) Is there a way to save NAND backups onto my computer so I have multiple versions of a rom/kernel combination?
Yes just conenct the phone to a computer navigate to where the nand are stored and copy them over. for clockwork it is ussually int he clockwork folder for amon ra the backup folder.
3) Is there a way to save sense and all of my programs before I flash a ROM so that after I flash I don't have to type my username/password in all of my programs and reorganize my UI?
It is not advised. while you can back up all your apps and there data it is not recommended to restore the system data between roms. The reason being it can cause conflicts with changes made by the dev. It is a little bit of a hassle but it is best to type back in your username/password and reset up your home screen.
4) Are there any useful tips out there to make this process easier?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Back u apps with titanium back up (if you dont have it get the paid version) otherwise it is going to take a few minutes to set up your rom once you flash it there isnt much you can do that is "safe"
1. Thats the way Ive always done it.
2. Yea copy the nand folder to your computer.
3. I use my backup pro, its simple quick and easy. Some people like Titanium backup but every time I used it its always caused problems for me.
4. My method: Backup apps+app data using backup app, nandroid backup, wipe+cache+dalvik, flash ROM, download backup app and restore.
A little tip, I always add the backup apk to my ROM using winrar so I can restore my apps immediately after I flash.
Thanks! That was quick. This forum is awesome!

[Q] What should be backed up in Amon RA nandroid backups?

I recently upgraded my Amon RA to the latest build (2.3)
I like all the new choices but I'm confused about what I should be backing up when making a Nandroid.
I made one that backed these parts up:
[x] boot
[x] system
[x] data
[x] wimax
Is that good enough? Should I backup recovery too? I understand sd-ext and .android-secure backups will take more space and time to create. But are the ones I listed above pretty much the only essential things if I ever need to flash a backup?
yep...
I would make a backup of just wimax, then there would be no need to back it up again.
Depends on your amount of paranoia about being able to recover. I backup my entire phone, including my SD card, prior to flashing any ROM. So far I haven't had any issues recovering. Granted I'm new to rooting and flashing ROMs...so haven't had enough time to really bork things up.
I know my b/u is over kill, but I'd rather spend the few extra minutes getting everything than find out I missed something if I need to recover.
HTC Evo
Rooted, but still stock...for now
----------------------------------------
The program is designed to work, if it's not, we have a problem.
You are good to go with your backup scheme.
You don't need to backup WiMax every time. Just back it up once, separately, then backup boot, data, and system regularly.
i have four or five nands on my card that i checked every option for. cant hurt...
Thanks for all the replies guys.
I'll take it all into account and do an "in case of catastrophic data loss" backup (in other words, full on backup, full checks)
And keep it to the OP scheme i had for future backups.
@n00bhackin
I'm the same way. Better safe than sorry.
Yep, wimax is a seperate backup.
Before backup, wipe cache and dalvik cache (reduces size of backup file and forces dalvik to be rebuilt when recovered).
At a bare minimum: boot, system, data
If you use apps2sd, backup .android.secure also unless you want to reinstall some apps.
If you use apps2sd to a ext3 partition on your SD, backup SD:ext for the same reasons above.
If your not sure which apps2sd you are using;
1) check on your SD the folder .android.secure, got apps there then its option 1.
2) if you use dark tremors apps2sd, then you know what it does and you back up option 2.
It would be awesome to have a .ini file on the sd with various defaults already enabled.
Maybe next in the next version

Few questions on using Titanium back up on GNEX.

I've used Titanium to do my back-ups on my old Galaxy Vibrant, so I have a general understanding of how it works. My question is this though, when I did back-ups in the past, they were saved to the SD card (I think), but the GNEX doesn't have an SD card. So if I do a back-up, won't the back-up I just made get erased when I wipe data before flashing a new ROM? Also, what about my pictures, will they get erased? I have hundreds of pictures on my phone, maybe even over 1000 TBH. I don't want to have to reload everything again. And last, does Titanium back-up your progress in games? I seem to remember that it does, but I don't remember for sure.
Any guides out there for doing Titanium back-ups on the Gnex? Why didn't those silly people just give us an sd card slot
ok even though it does not have a physically removable sd card it still does not get wiped when flashing roms and wiping the data cache partition. only if you do a factory data reset from the phone's settings. I've never needed to do that so dont worry i have 1000's of pics too. I'd back em up just in case on your laptop for safe measure though anyways. also when you backup th apps it does not save game progress unless you backup the app's data. then it should save preferences and progress and all that good stuff. Thank me if it helps!!
Ok, another thing I just thought of. After I flash the new ROM and enter my email, the phone is going to start automatically downloading all my apps, obviously I don't want to do that since I'm going to restore them with Titanium. How do I turn off the auto-downloading of apps?
After I flash the new ROM and enter my email, the phone is going to start automatically downloading all my apps
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No it won't. It only restores your apps if you decide to not turn off the "restore my apps and settings" option. It's on by default, simply turn it off after you've entered your Gmail account. It's the next or the second screen after you logged into your Gmail account.
Ok, now my phone doesn't want to mount when I connect it to my computer. It charges, it just won't mount. ftw....
Hotstuff5964 said:
Ok, now my phone doesn't want to mount when I connect it to my computer. It charges, it just won't mount. ftw....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not sure about the mount issue but I will tell you to definitely leave the auto restore on and let the market automatically download your apps after a wipe. You want to do this because it will automatically install the apps where as titanium will take forever and you have to manually tap install. Then once the apps are installed go to titanium and just backup so data only which is you game progress and preferences and such. I found this out the hard way lol
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk
In my experience, the restore and wipe cache (maybe wipe data too) only clean the system/ or /cache, and leave the sdcard/ untouched. So the data backup by Titanium back-ups should work rightly.
BTW, I have some problem about using Titanium back-ups. If I always want to keep the newest backup of both application and system data, are the any useful script?
Although there's a script could backup the new application that installed after last backup, but what about the new system app/data? Because sometimes I may have change ROM and it will add some new system app/data.
So far, I use the script that backup all the system/application data. But I wonder it may leave duplicate backup to some app, that's the condition I want to avoid.
Any idea?

root, flash, backup file moving help

Hey quick question,
so I make a backup of my system for flashing. Then I move the backup onto a folder to my computer same with my titanium backup folder. So when I wipe and flash a new rom, I have all of my files for my system backup and my titanium backup on my phone. After I restore all of my apps after flashing the new rom, can I move the backup files and leave them on the computer as well as the system backup to save space? Is there anyway that I can still restore the system if it gets stuck in a bootloop - (besides flashing a new stock one)?
basically I want to store the system backup and the titanium backup on my computer so they are safe and because they take up about 4 gb of space on my phone.
I tried to be clear but let me know if I should further explain
Thanks
I wouldn't backup system apps with titanium, because they can vary from rom to rom. As long as you properly wipe your phone before flashing, you shouldn't get bootloops(can still happen). If you get a bootloop, try pulling the battery 1st. If your phone still bootloops, you have to use download mode and ODIN to flash stock ROM.
sent from somewhere
right which I have done before. I just want to know that if my phone does get stuck somewhere (has happened before, and I had to flash a stock rom and lost everything - lost backup) Would I be able to move my system restore and titanium backup files from my computer to my phone to be able to recover?
Basically store backups on computer, then if something happens, be able to transfer them back to phone
Thanks for the help
Generally it's good to leave backups someplace where they won't get easily corrupted or lost. Since the S3 has a microsd slot, sure, keep them on your computer and move them over if necessary.
My SOP is to keep the current backup on the microsd, and store the backups on my computer. Then if I need to reflash/nandroid back, they're there, and if my microsd is corrupted I have a known good backup.
b11aze said:
right which I have done before. I just want to know that if my phone does get stuck somewhere (has happened before, and I had to flash a stock rom and lost everything - lost backup) Would I be able to move my system restore and titanium backup files from my computer to my phone to be able to recover?
Basically store backups on computer, then if something happens, be able to transfer them back to phone
Thanks for the help
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As long as you can get into your custom recovery after anything happens, backups will work. Make sure to backup system, data, and boot. If not and you have to flash using ODIN, like starting from scratch, you may have issues such as md5 mismatches.
sent from somewhere
ok I was just looking to see if it was possible or not to transfer backups from computer to phone if the phone cant turn on ie. stuck in download mode or recovery mode.

All app data gone and reset to default. Philz recovery glitch?

I was rooted, had Philz CWM recovery, agni kernel and xposed. Everything worked fine, I used to get forced reboots when the system heated up but it was nothing new, everything worked like it used to after reboot.
Since just today I changed to "winter 3d LWP" which is mildly graphics intensive, didnt experience any lag.
Then when I pressed the home button sometime later that day, the 3d wallpaper stretched across and after sometime, phone rebooted but was stuck in loop this time. just to make sure i accessed philz recovery mode and rebooted from there. It took some time for the system to boot but everything was reset to default, all the app data and phone settings were reset excluding the data I manually put there, which seemed like the dalvik cache was wiped or something. So i accessed the recovery mode again and rebooted since i couldn't find anything that would help.
But after boot i got the same interface, it asked me to login to dropbox and asked to login and stuff which I already did after the app data was automatically wiped the first time.
Is this some philz recovery glitch?
Any possible way I can get the data back? Not possible though but anything will be appreciated since this is the third time I'm losing my data. It's tough to recover from that situation.
Normally this won't happen for the reboot problem you can try to change the agni settings by using the default oc setting for cpu and gpu.
And try to take backup of your app data through any backup apps like Tb so next time something happens you can at least restore everything
And also do a nandroid backup always.
please press the thanks button if i helped
I don't really tinker with any clock settings. Exynos here gets heat up easily.
Do I have to take a nandroid backup and another backup parallel to it? Or just nandroid would do?
I need to export backup directly to external storage excluding SD card. I have OTG, would that work with external hdd for import?
Sujay Shinoda said:
I don't really tinker with any clock settings. Exynos here gets heat up easily.
Do I have to take a nandroid backup and another backup parallel to it? Or just nandroid would do?
I need to export backup directly to external storage excluding SD card. I have OTG, would that work with external hdd for import?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
nandroid backup will take the complete backup of you phone including apps, data, efs, modem, etc. its like a emergency restore of the full phone.
and try to take a backup through TB so you can even restore only the data of the apps in some cases.
regarding OTG i think it can be, anyway you can try it.

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