I have an HTC Desire Z, and it's been acting strangely lately. I hear it play the startup sound when it's in my pocket, meaning the phone has crashed when I wasn't even doing anything. I suppose it's time for a hard reset. I'm very reluctant to do this, but when I missed an important call the other day because my "com.htc.phone" (or whatever) application crashed and I didn't notice, that was the last straw.
What is a checklist of things I should do before hard resetting? So far, I've:
1) Backed up SMS
2) Taken screenshots of all my home screens so as to put the icons back in the same place
3) Taken screenshots of the application settings screens so as to install all the same applications again
4) Taken screenshots of some of the other settings screens, so as to use the same ringtone, background, SMS beep, etc.
What are some other steps I should take? I'm scared that I won't get my phone set up the same way again. My phone is great right now, it's just how I like it - except for the crashes.
I would perform a nandroid backup (complete backup done in recovery) also just in case you feel like going back to before.
And I'd download and run Titanium Backup, to backup apps and data.
-Nipqer
Don't you need the paid version of Titanium Backup to actually use the useful features? I'm in China and Google won't let me pay for anything.
Actually, I'm kind of antsy about backing up too much. As in, the settings are obviously screwed up somehow and the hard reset will (hopefully) fix things.
Nandroid Backup is a set of tools and a script that will enable anyone who has root on their G1 and has the engineering/dev spl bootloader [1] (or has a dev phone) + a recovery image with busybox and adbd running as root [2] to make full system backups. These can then be restored using the fastboot [3] commandline tool and your phone in SPL/bootloader mode (hold camera + power).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, that's way too complicated. Besides, if I restore like this, I'll just restore all my problems, too. I'm just hoping for a list of stuff I would forget to do, but will certainly remember about 5 seconds after I click "yes I'm sure to hard reset".
Titanium backup free lets you do most of the things paid does, paid just makes it faster and allows dropbox/google drive sync as far as I know
-Nipqer
Related
well long story short... unrelated to anything herein... i have two EVO phones. one is a replacement phone for the current active phone. Sprint sent it to me, cause they couldn't figure out why Google's market wouldn't download apps to my phone. (I solved that problem on my own) but in the mean time i had this replacement phone, so I decided to test things out...
I have fully rooted the test phone, and I am using DamageControl v3.2.3. I installed apps on this phone over wifi.. and started to think that now i need to move my data over from the current active phone.
I have titanium backup paid version. On the test phone, i have backed up the phone going through the root and unlocking of NAND process. Pretty cool application.
I also have "lookout" installed on the active phone, and it is current.
My question is, best i can tell much of the application data seems to be on the SDRAM card. Is that not the case? what data is actually lost during a root proces or NAND unlocking process?
Since Titanium backup requires root access I really can't back up the current phone using that application. I have some backup with the "lookout" application. But i was wondering when the device gets flashed... what exactly is getting writen over.
i see a folder called Mail on the SD card... it is about 50mb... is that where my mail messages are from my different POP3 accounts? on the test phone, all of the mail account settings are not there obviously... but if i add the email accounts will it read the mail from the SDcard created using the other phone?
here is the data I like to migrate over from the rootless phone to the rooted phone.
1. mail messages from about 12 mail accounts
2. Mail account settings
3. layout of the different Sense walls (or whatever they are called) ..you know the faces with all of the icons you see when you look at the phone (there are 7)
4. phone call history
5. SMS messages and history
6. application settings
7. Browser bookmarks (and settings)
i can see my pictures and video are located on my sdram card, but not sure about the above items....
can you help? I am a skilled IT network pro, but not too skilled in the phone's unix like workings... can you help?
There are probably several ways you can do this, but I think it will be easier to accomplish this if you root your rootless phone. Once that phone is rooted you can use titanium or make a nandroid back up and restore on the phone that already has root. Both nandroid backup and titanium backups are saved on the SD card. If rooting is not an option your going to have to look for an app that can make backups without root. There might be one out there but I dont know of any.
it is not clear to me, what exactly is lost when I root. There are warnings that states:
"wipe all of your data so brace for that. backup or what not"
doesn't that mean I will loose user data in step 1 of the toastcfh process before i am able to install (or run) titanium backup?
the warning is not really clear to me exactly what is going on....
I am not against rooting, the rootless phone. Do think Sprint would care if I send them a rooted phone I suppose i could de-root, the rooted phone. I remember seeing somebody having a process for that... not sure.
need some help clearing up some of this... thanks!
Hi all. Well I've not rooted yet (just not had the time), and have a stock orange UK ROM with the default stuff! I have searched around and can't seem to find the answer to simple backup questions!
I am having the reboot issues (well documented in another thread), and it's getting worse and worse. even to the extent now that it's rebooting after calls (started out when charging using games, then now I cant run navigation for more than 2 minutes).
I have been told to do a factory reset (not a bad idea TBH). But backups is my main concern.
I have my contacts and calendar fine (not an issue), what I am concerned about mainly is my paid for apps. I have just synced with AppBrain, but will this get my paid for apps back?
Also SMS is the other thing I want to backup, I have installed SMS Backup which backs up to an XML file, which I can read. But read that some people have had problems with restoring, is this true? Or can someone recommend a better app? I am not too concerned with settings, as happy to do things slightly differently this time round, so mainly paiud for apps! Also what happens when orange eventaulyl send me a new phone (which seems to be the resoltuion of the paid for apps?)
I will take the SD card out when I factory reset, but what else should I worry about?
Regards, Martin
I have used SMS Backup and it seems to work fine with me. Not sure if it backs up MMS though, but there is a seperate free tool to save the MMS to SDcard available on the market.
As for your paid for apps, they will show up in the Market once you have perfromed a factory reset and you will be able to re-install without having to pay again. Just make sure that you log in using the same credentials.
The backups I perfored prior to rooting were as follows:
1) export contacts to SDCard
2) backup SMS using SMS Backup & Restore
3) Backup call logs using Call Logs Backup and Restore - I wanted to keep these.
A factory reset should not wipe what is currently on your SDCard, but I cannot hurt to copy the contents to your PC/Laptop before doing the reset.
dcnice said:
I have used SMS Backup and it seems to work fine with me. Not sure if it backs up MMS though, but there is a seperate free tool to save the MMS to SDcard available on the market.
As for your paid for apps, they will show up in the Market once you have perfromed a factory reset and you will be able to re-install without having to pay again. Just make sure that you log in using the same credentials.
The backups I perfored prior to rooting were as follows:
1) export contacts to SDCard
2) backup SMS using SMS Backup & Restore
3) Backup call logs using Call Logs Backup and Restore - I wanted to keep these.
A factory reset should not wipe what is currently on your SDCard, but I cannot hurt to copy the contents to your PC/Laptop before doing the reset.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for this, yes call logs would be cool too! I'm not too fussed with regards to the settings of the phone, gives me a chance to start over! Im not even that fussed on SMS's nice to have a history they're currently backing up to the google mail thing!
It was the apps I've paid for most concerned for, and yeah sounds good that it's tied to the google account, guess that means if/when I get a new phone they'll just get copied over to the new phone, when orange realise that it needs to be replaced... Pffftt...
Many thanks makes sence now (used to the iTunes/iPhone system! WHich shilst walled, does make some things easy! I PREFER DROID THO!)
Hi
So I don't really mind if I have to hook it up to the computer or anything, I just want a really complete backup solution. It should backup pretty much everything I have on my SD Card.
I already have Titanium Backup Pro and upuntil now I thought it was complete, but after completely wiping my SD Card in an attempt to install the latest RUU (which didn't work btw, but that's off topic...) and copying my Titanium Backup-stuff from a computer backup I realized it's really really incomplete. To be honest I'm not at all sure what it even is backing up... maybe my Titanium is just set wrong?
So what happened is this... like I said my SD Card was wiped but I had previously backed up Titanium to my Dropbox and pushed the whole folder to my phone after the wipe. However none of my settings for Nova Launcher were saved. My Nova settings back up was not saved. Passwords for Google, Facebook, Dropbox etc were not saved. Data from Swiftkey was not saved. Kakao Talk and SMS messaging history was not saved.
Like I said, I'm not sure what actually was saved...
I don't really mind, maybe even prefer, if I could use my computer to store these backups instead of the SD since I don't always have a lot of space left on my device.
(I think I got the filesystem thing and updating to the latest RUU didn't work - that's what landed me in this situation to begin with by the way.)
kaminix said:
Hi
So I don't really mind if I have to hook it up to the computer or anything, I just want a really complete backup solution. It should backup pretty much everything I have on my SD Card.
I already have Titanium Backup Pro and upuntil now I thought it was complete, but after completely wiping my SD Card in an attempt to install the latest RUU (which didn't work btw, but that's off topic...) and copying my Titanium Backup-stuff from a computer backup I realized it's really really incomplete. To be honest I'm not at all sure what it even is backing up... maybe my Titanium is just set wrong?
So what happened is this... like I said my SD Card was wiped but I had previously backed up Titanium to my Dropbox and pushed the whole folder to my phone after the wipe. However none of my settings for Nova Launcher were saved. My Nova settings back up was not saved. Passwords for Google, Facebook, Dropbox etc were not saved. Data from Swiftkey was not saved. Kakao Talk and SMS messaging history was not saved.
Like I said, I'm not sure what actually was saved...
I don't really mind, maybe even prefer, if I could use my computer to store these backups instead of the SD since I don't always have a lot of space left on my device.
(I think I got the filesystem thing and updating to the latest RUU didn't work - that's what landed me in this situation to begin with by the way.)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Even if you pushed the whole folder back to your phone...did you actually restore the app/data using Titanium afterwards? Pushing the back-up folder back to your phone just means Titanium can access it. It doesn't restore everything unless you actually do so using Titanium.
Otherwise, making a nandroid backup using CWM recovery takes a perfect snapshot of your phone at that moment. So your texts will all be in place, passwords, settings etc. will all be as they are now. Of course, you can't really flash your nandroid over a new ROM just to restore app data, but it allows you to revert your phone back to its original state before flashing (like in your above scenario where you had a failed RUU installation)
poofish said:
Even if you pushed the whole folder back to your phone...did you actually restore the app/data using Titanium afterwards? Pushing the back-up folder back to your phone just means Titanium can access it. It doesn't restore everything unless you actually do so using Titanium.
Otherwise, making a nandroid backup using CWM recovery takes a perfect snapshot of your phone at that moment. So your texts will all be in place, passwords, settings etc. will all be as they are now. Of course, you can't really flash your nandroid over a new ROM just to restore app data, but it allows you to revert your phone back to its original state before flashing (like in your above scenario where you had a failed RUU installation)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi, thanks for your reply.
Yes I did restore. When I backup I do the full backup thingie in batch operations and when I restore I do the restore apps and system data + restore app data.
Yeah, I was thinking of Nandroid too but doesn't that just do non-SD card? I'm very new to Android but isn't most of the stuff I actually care about (app data and such) on the SD?
titanium doesn't restore system bits by default and google/facebook/dropbox is integrated into the OS.
You CAN force it to I believe but it WILL break things if you change your ROM at all.
IN my mind a small issue doesn't take long to sign back into those services as long as all your apps and data is intact thats all good.
If you have the filesystem thing I STRONGLY SUGGEST you up to 1.29.xyz.11 before you do any more custom rom/CWM work. Even relock/RUU, OTA then unlock and go. I had very bad experiences with this bug.
wintermute000 said:
titanium doesn't restore system bits by default and google/facebook/dropbox is integrated into the OS.
You CAN force it to I believe but it WILL break things if you change your ROM at all.
IN my mind a small issue doesn't take long to sign back into those services as long as all your apps and data is intact thats all good.
If you have the filesystem thing I STRONGLY SUGGEST you up to 1.29.xyz.11 before you do any more custom rom/CWM work. Even relock/RUU, OTA then unlock and go. I had very bad experiences with this bug.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi. Thanks for your reply.
I totally would upgrade to the RUU if HTC there wasn't this small issue of the RUU not working. I live and bought my phone in Sweden and my CID confirms it's a european phone - however when I run the RUU it formats the phone and transfers about half the ROM then setup says "nope, wrong ROM." and leaves me with a dysfunctional OS. I'm also on a Mac so I have to run Windows 7 in VM Ware Fusion and starting that stupid RUU-file and everything takes AGES. I've already spent the better part of a day and night trying to get it to work and if I'm opening that RUU one more time with VM Ware if it doesn't work I think I'm gonna hang myself. So very very very sick and tired of that bullcrap. So... for now I'm either waiting for access to a Windows computer so I can try all of the RUUs and see if my phone's transmutated into the wrong region OR I'm awaiting an S-OFF mod so I don't need to use RUU.
As for the logins and such, it's not only google/facebook/dropbox. It's also Twitter, Evernote, Swiftkey and well... pretty much everything. Chrome seems to be logged in. AnkiDroid didn't get to save it's data (which luckily is saved in the cloud... and backed up manually).
Google Music offline data would be nice to keep to since it's pretty slow to sync. Plus I have to look-up what I actually want everytime I reflash.
Also, if I'm only flashing an upgrade to my current ROM must I really enter all the passwords again anyway?
kaminix said:
Hi. Thanks for your reply.
I totally would upgrade to the RUU if HTC there wasn't this small issue of the RUU not working. I live and bought my phone in Sweden and my CID confirms it's a european phone - however when I run the RUU it formats the phone and transfers about half the ROM then setup says "nope, wrong ROM." and leaves me with a dysfunctional OS. I'm also on a Mac so I have to run Windows 7 in VM Ware Fusion and starting that stupid RUU-file and everything takes AGES. I've already spent the better part of a day and night trying to get it to work and if I'm opening that RUU one more time with VM Ware if it doesn't work I think I'm gonna hang myself. So very very very sick and tired of that bullcrap. So... for now I'm either waiting for access to a Windows computer so I can try all of the RUUs and see if my phone's transmutated into the wrong region OR I'm awaiting an S-OFF mod so I don't need to use RUU.
As for the logins and such, it's not only google/facebook/dropbox. It's also Twitter, Evernote, Swiftkey and well... pretty much everything. Chrome seems to be logged in. AnkiDroid didn't get to save it's data (which luckily is saved in the cloud... and backed up manually).
Google Music offline data would be nice to keep to since it's pretty slow to sync. Plus I have to look-up what I actually want everytime I reflash.
Also, if I'm only flashing an upgrade to my current ROM must I really enter all the passwords again anyway?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not sure if its not vmware thats breaking your RUU..... you can check your CID in fastboot and verify, if its supposed to work then its supposed to work, its vmware breaking it.
Hey at least you can flash a ROM right? 10 minutes entering passwords again is a lot less problems than a lot of people have encountered (including me, I got a corrupted super laggy file system IO after CWM and the disappearing SD card space bug hit at once).
As for nandroid, yes it doesn't touch your sd card but otherwise its 1:1 I've always gotten back from a nandroid with everything exactly as it was
wintermute000 said:
Not sure if its not vmware thats breaking your RUU..... you can check your CID in fastboot and verify, if its supposed to work then its supposed to work, its vmware breaking it.
Hey at least you can flash a ROM right? 10 minutes entering passwords again is a lot less problems than a lot of people have encountered (including me, I got a corrupted super laggy file system IO after CWM and the disappearing SD card space bug hit at once).
As for nandroid, yes it doesn't touch your sd card but otherwise its 1:1 I've always gotten back from a nandroid with everything exactly as it was
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Maybe. But it's very strange that VM Ware would be breaking a RUU isn't it?
Either way it means I need access to a Windows computer, either because VM Ware is breaking or because it's too darn slow. Indeed I have checked my CID in fastboot and it does say euro (well, I don't remember the CID itself but it correlated to euro).
Thanks for all your help. Greatly appreciated.
no probs good luck
edit: are you sure you are unbranded. If you are branded (Carrier handset) you need the carrier's RUU
its not that strange vmware breaks it, you are doing something that requires low level write access via USB.
Yes, I'm a noob. No, I can't keep things brief. I'm sorry video, I just can't do it. Hello XDA. Here's my pickle:
So, my camera's faulty, and I'm going to have to send my Note II back to Kogan. This is my first Android handset, and my first time properly experiencing and using Android (I moved here from a Blackberry Pearl 9100). I don't consider myself a base-line user, I'm competent with many forms of electronics and computing so I quickly settled into Android nicely. Thus far I've rooted, flashed recovery and flashed CyanogenMod 9 for one Android phone (I was the first in my family to make the switch, my sister got a Galaxy Wonder for Christmas and I flashed CM9 so she could have at least ICS for her phone) and it was a fairly straight-forward process, nothing too difficult (although it seems my father's Motorola Defy+ might be a bit trickier).
I'll get to the point, due to the camera being basically dead on arrival, I've got to send it back. I don't want to send it back with all of my personal information intact however, I'd prefer to take a full backup of it and then factory reset the device before sending it away. This is where the warranty clause comes in.
I can't root the device (this action breaks warranty) and therefore can't flash CWM to do a nandroid backup. After some reading, a nandroid sounded like the ideal solution but obviously I can't do that. See, I wanted to backup all of my data, including (if possible) apps, settings, accounts, the works. I really don't want to have to go through the process of re-downloading all of my apps (my internet connection isn't the quickest around) and setting everything up just the way I want it again.
I stumbled across the adb backup technique, and considering the N7100 shipped with Jellybean 4.1 and adb backup requires ICS 4.0+, I thought "Hey, why not. It seems pretty straight forward." I also figured it'd be a small learning experience, I'm thinking about getting into android app development sometime in the near future and needed the SDK anyway so I downloaded and installed that, fired up adb and ran the backup with the following parameters:
Code:
adb backup -f <FILE PATH> -apk -shared -all -nosystem
And it seemed to get stuck on the apk for GTA Vice City. So, after about an hour of sitting, I pulled the plug and tried again. This time it got to Angry Birds and got stuck once more. I decided to run it again, but with a different set of parameters, I thought "Maybe it's getting stuck with the SD card data."
Code:
adb backup -f <FILE PATH> -apk -all -noshared -nosystem
This time it got stuck on Bad Piggies. I pulled the plug once more and started searching for answers, but there's not a huge amount of discussion about the backup function, let alone specific to the Note II. I read some stuff about the One X getting stuck on certain parts, but they certainly weren't games like this.
And that's the thing that links them all, they're games. I'm not sure if that specifically has any effect on the process, but I'm beginning to think that trying to back up EVERYTHING so that I can restore my device to the same state it is in now is a futile effort. Without the ease of a nandroid 'snapshot', I'm running out of ideas. I could go through and delete every game I've installed and try the backup again, but I'd like to see if anyone else has any alternatives or explanations.
Here are my queries, don't feel like you've got to answer them all, they're just the questions I've got in my head right now.
1. Is there any known reason as to why adb backup gets stuck on these apks?
2. Is there a better way of creating some form of 'snapshot' of my device without rooting it?
3. Would Samsung Kies' backup utility keep my app and system settings after a factory reset (in that it'd load up Nova Launcher with all of it's settings, along with the few widgets I have, intact)?
4. Are there any apps that would do this? I've heard Titanium Backup will, but you need to be rooted to use that.
I'm starting to feel that just doing it the manual way is going to be easier in the long run.
With question three, I'm assuming that Kies won't backup any apks, and therefore when my phone is sent back to me I'll have to set it up again, download my required/desired apps and then restore my settings through Kies (which will hopefully also restore settings for apps like Nova Launcher, and even better, for widget applications like HD widgets). However, if I'm wrong and Kies DOES backup apks, I'll just do that, it's so much less screwing around and it does what I wanted it to do but didn't think it did in the first place.
Thanks XDA,
-svdkillswitch
(Also, first post!)
Other information:
Device: GT-N7100 (international)
Carrier: Unlocked, Telstra
Android version: 4.1.1, 'Jelly Bean'
Baseband version: N7100UBALJ1
Build number: JRO03C.N7100UBALJ1
Rooted: No
Easiest way
Root with exynos abuse exploit (method 3 in link)and install titanium backup and backup all data using it. I recommend to save backup folder in Ext SD card.
After finishing this you can unroot from application itself.
dr.ketan said:
Easiest way
Root with exynos abuse exploit (method 3 in link)and install titanium backup and backup all data using it. I recommend to save backup folder in Ext SD card.
After finishing this you can unroot from application itself.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for your help,
You say in the linked post that while it doesn't trigger the flash counter, it can cause problems with the camera. If I'm just temp-rooting, backing it up with Titanium, and then un-rooting it again, none of these effects will remain I assume. I guess it doesn't matter too much anyway actually, because my camera is the reason I'm sending it back in.
And once I get my device back, it's as simple as installing the apk, rooting the device, installing Titanium and restoring my backup from the ext SD.
Sounds good. I'll give it a whirl and let you know how I go. +1'd.
-svdkillswitch
It cause camera issue only if you disable exploit, here you need not to do anything rather thn just root.
-Install that apk file, get device rooted.(there is option to root device in application), you need not to check disable exploit
-Install titanium Pro from market and backup (first select backup location to Ext sd card)
- Once finish, uninstall titanium and unroot device from exynose app
You can also factory reset and send to service centre.
dr.ketan said:
It cause camera issue only if you disable exploit, here you need not to do anything rather thn just root.
-Install that apk file, get device rooted.(there is option to root device in application), you need not to check disable exploit
-Install titanium Pro from market and backup (first select backup location to Ext sd card)
- Once finish, uninstall titanium and unroot device from exynose app
You can also factory reset and send to service centre.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, that's all I did. Rooted, installed Titanium and backed-up my data to the external SD card. I've un-rooted the device, all I need to do now is factory reset.
Thanks for your help, much appreciated.
-svdkillswitch
but adb doesnt work
Hi guys! What is the best way to backup as much data as possible before rooting? I'm coming from an iPhone but prior to it I was on Android so I'm a little rusty. I'm aware of TiBu backups but if I recall correctly you need root to get a full backup. What I'm doing now is backing up everything through Google Drive backups and Google Photos. Is there an app that can maybe batch backup/restore apks along with their data without root? I'd like to keep as much data as possible like app data and MMS before I wipe and root.
One more thing, I'm currently on the 8.1 official firmware but came from the DP2 OTA. If I were to unenroll from the beta program, will it force a wipe? I know it forces a wipe when unenrolling and going down to the 8.0 firmware but since it's on the same version of Android, will it still require a wipe?
Thanks in advance for any help.
I hope someone has a better one. But one that is clunky but works without root is Helium by clockworkmod. Need a PC since you run a program on the PC as part of the process. Not all apps will backup with it, but it does lots of apps. I can pretty much do all the apps I need to do that aren't already backed up by Google backup. Most of the apps that won't allow backup will be financial ones and others that you just log back into your account, and you're back in business that way.
You download the Helium app from the playstore. When you run the app, it'll tell you to connect to a PC. And it'll show you a link to download a program for the PC. The program on the PC is what allows the app on the phone to do backups. I don't know if ADB or Android tools have to also be installed, but I think it stands alone. You have to run the PC program every time to do backups. After the first time, you just start the program, plug the phone to the PC and start the app, or any change in order of those steps you want.
The clunky part for me is the password. You have to set a password for the phone since the app can't access the data without the password. So it can't be a pattern lock or pin.
That's no big deals since you only need to do this when backing up so can just temporarily change it, and is not the clunky part.
Here's the clunky part. When you go to backup, It makes no difference whether you've saved the password or not. When you get to the password field It'll autofill the password (with any characters saved or not) in addition to anything you started filling and the start backing up. Then may finally say backup failed. If you wait enough time it will not auto enter stuff, then you can manually enter the password. And it'll backup just fine. But it will show a prompt that the device is protected so enter the password. So you enter it all over again. Except this time it has some data to autofill in. So if you want to select another app to backup, it'll seem to backup better. Except it often will give an error.
For me, the best approach seems to be don't save the password in the app. Wait for a few seconds to make sure it isn't going to try to auto-enter. Manually enter the password. When it prompts the second time, just cancel instead of entering anything.
And after I just typed all that, I kept getting backup failed trying to do a backup. I finally managed to do it, but it is like that every time I try. some days it just works first time. Some days it takes trying different things. Once it a while it is better to save the password.
Anyway, the backups are good. Oh, after you've selected the apps/data to backup. Go to the bottom and kinda pull up below the green line and it'll show a check box to just save the data and not the app apk if you want a smaller size backup. I think it is faster just saving the app with it if you are moving or backing up to restore. Otherwise you have to wait for the download and install from the playstore.
The backups end up in their own folder in a folder named Carbon.
lacaprjc said:
Hi guys! What is the best way to backup as much data as possible before rooting? I'm coming from an iPhone but prior to it I was on Android so I'm a little rusty. I'm aware of TiBu backups but if I recall correctly you need root to get a full backup. What I'm doing now is backing up everything through Google Drive backups and Google Photos. Is there an app that can maybe batch backup/restore apks along with their data without root? I'd like to keep as much data as possible like app data and MMS before I wipe and root.
One more thing, I'm currently on the 8.1 official firmware but came from the DP2 OTA. If I were to unenroll from the beta program, will it force a wipe? I know it forces a wipe when unenrolling and going down to the 8.0 firmware but since it's on the same version of Android, will it still require a wipe?
Thanks in advance for any help.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
learn: adb backup
when unenrolling from the beta, and you are already on current stable, it will not wipe, nor update.
Voicebox said:
I hope someone has a better one. But one that is clunky but works without root is Helium by clockworkmod. Need a PC since you run a program on the PC as part of the process. Not all apps will backup with it, but it does lots of apps. I can pretty much do all the apps I need to do that aren't already backed up by Google backup. Most of the apps that won't allow backup will be financial ones and others that you just log back into your account, and you're back in business that way.
You download the Helium app from the playstore. When you run the app, it'll tell you to connect to a PC. And it'll show you a link to download a program for the PC. The program on the PC is what allows the app on the phone to do backups. I don't know if ADB or Android tools have to also be installed, but I think it stands alone. You have to run the PC program every time to do backups. After the first time, you just start the program, plug the phone to the PC and start the app, or any change in order of those steps you want.
The clunky part for me is the password. You have to set a password for the phone since the app can't access the data without the password. So it can't be a pattern lock or pin.
That's no big deals since you only need to do this when backing up so can just temporarily change it, and is not the clunky part.
Here's the clunky part. When you go to backup, It makes no difference whether you've saved the password or not. When you get to the password field It'll autofill the password (with any characters saved or not) in addition to anything you started filling and the start backing up. Then may finally say backup failed. If you wait enough time it will not auto enter stuff, then you can manually enter the password. And it'll backup just fine. But it will show a prompt that the device is protected so enter the password. So you enter it all over again. Except this time it has some data to autofill in. So if you want to select another app to backup, it'll seem to backup better. Except it often will give an error.
For me, the best approach seems to be don't save the password in the app. Wait for a few seconds to make sure it isn't going to try to auto-enter. Manually enter the password. When it prompts the second time, just cancel instead of entering anything.
And after I just typed all that, I kept getting backup failed trying to do a backup. I finally managed to do it, but it is like that every time I try. some days it just works first time. Some days it takes trying different things. Once it a while it is better to save the password.
Anyway, the backups are good. Oh, after you've selected the apps/data to backup. Go to the bottom and kinda pull up below the green line and it'll show a check box to just save the data and not the app apk if you want a smaller size backup. I think it is faster just saving the app with it if you are moving or backing up to restore. Otherwise you have to wait for the download and install from the playstore.
The backups end up in their own folder in a folder named Carbon.
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Thanks for the help! I'm gonna try this method now and let you know if all is well.
lacaprjc said:
Hi guys! What is the best way to backup as much data as possible before rooting?
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Sounds like you've done all you can... except for unlocking the phone as soon as you got it. Just make sure you use both separate unlock commands and get unlock and unlock_critical done properly. I think you'll find the phone will be pretty much back where you left it. Just get on with it ffs! Not a big deal.