Hello, as some of you know, after I used Keis to backup my device, did a factory reset and restored the device, I found that some of the data and files were not backed up. Since Keis cannot do a good job in backing up the device, why do we need Keis? Is there any good app that can do a full backup/clone so that after restoration, the device is like it is before a factory reset? From Helium Wiki, it says that the app does not backup photos nor videos. It also does not backup system files, widgets, device specific apps like s-note or s-memo, contacts, etc.
I usually keep personal things ( documents, photos, etc. ) on the removable SD card, and then use TWRP to do the backing up of the device. Quite frankly, having TWRP backups has saved my bacon many, many times Another option would be Titanium backup, which has been around forever and has a very large user base.
Thanks. By TWRP, do you mean TWRP Manager (ROOT)? I don't know if ROOT means it only works on rooted devices. As far as I heard, Android 4.4.2 on our device does not allow saving on SD card. How do you do that?
Yes TWRP is a replacement recovery which you boot into prior to the OS booting using particular button combination. By loading prior to the operating system it allows for the complete backup of all files (system and all).
Essentially for the best possible outcome with regards to backup and restore it is best to have root which gives you full access to system files for backup and more importantly for restoring which requires the ability to overwrite system files.
One of the reasons I insist on having root on my devices is that I keep a backup of all applications using Titanium Backup such that if I'm ever disatisfied with the way an application update performs (lets say a developer updates their app and the new version has bugs in it) I can always roll back to the prior version if necessary. It's very handy for this purpose.
Related
Hi,
I was curious, when you install a rom & do a Titanium Backup restore of your data, are you possibly overwriting any system data?
Is it safe to use Titanium Backup to backup your apps, switch roms, restore, etc? Will that cause some sort of problem when trying roms?
Thanks,
Rich
I have limited knowledge about this, so take my thoughts with a grain of salt.
in my experience, doing a FULL back up and FULL restore resulted in errors. in my experiments with roms, i would back up only user apps with titanium then use an app for call log backups and another app for sms backups.
i really wish there was a way to backup everything BUT system data, that way when i relead a rom, all my icons will come back in the same order, my bookmarks will be intact and my settings would be the same. i'm not sure how to do that yet though.
I backup all user apps and then select the system data I want (desktop/messages/dictionary/boomarks). I too ran into errors if I backed up/restored everything.
Once I make the backups though I order the list by date backed up so all the stuff I skipped is at the bottom of the list; makes it somewhat easier to restore.
What are you guys using to back up your phones when switching Roms? I want to back up contacts, wifi settings, APPs etc.
If I'm switching ROMs I set them up from scratch again, after doing a Nandroid of the current one
Titanium Backup works really well. It's on the market. Probably on here somewhere also.
Will Titanium restore your screens? Its a bit tiring getting them alls setup and then starting from scratch on my droid incredible I never really set up the phone because I switched Roms so often.
veli69 said:
What are you guys using to back up your phones when switching Roms? I want to back up contacts, wifi settings, APPs etc.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Use google for contacts and wifi settings, apps Titanium Backup
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using XDA App
veli69 said:
Will Titanium restore your screens? Its a bit tiring getting them alls setup and then starting from scratch on my droid incredible I never really set up the phone because I switched Roms so often.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Alright, so for backing up your system you're going to want to use CWM and make a NANDROID backup. After you're done with that you will probably want to back up your apps. To back up app as well as data (such as angry birds scores) you will want to use Titanium Backup. Just remember not to restore system data, just apps/app data after flashing your ROM/Kernel.
For contacts (assuming you are on verizon) you had the option to chose where you store your contacts. Those options were either in your Gmail account or in "Backup manger" if you cant figure out where they are you can always make a file with all your contacts and place it on your SD card by going to the People App>menu>import/export>Export to storage.
As far as wifi settings go i am not aware of a way to do so.
And if you wanted to keep the launcher as it is (like where your apps are, folder, widgets, etc.) you will have to be on a custom launcher such as ADW or GoLauncher. This happens because the launcher is an app and when the app data is restored (from titanium backup) the placement of things are exactly how they were when you made the backup!
1) Nandroid. Always nanroid just to be safe - if something breaks, you need to have a working build to fall back on .
2) Contacts - I don't worry about it - they should all be synced with your Google account anyhoo.
3) Wifi settings - should also be synced with your Google account, and will be automatically restored when you set up the new ROM (assuming you tick the "restore data to my device" option in the google account setup screen).
4) Apps - TitaniumBackup for apps and data - not for system data though.
5) Launcher - some launchers will have an option built-in for backing up and restoring your screen layouts, folders, etc. Widgets will rarely be able to be restored no matter what method you use. You can also use Titanium to explicitly back up and restore your launcher's data - if you're still on the stock launcher, filter for System apps and look for an entry that starts out "[DESKTOP] Launcher ..." (it'll be in green) and backup/restore the data for that.
When you boot after first wipe it asks you for Google account details, then it will pull down your contacts, wifi settings etc. which we want.
But it also starts re-downloading all your Market apps, which we don't want because we've got them in Titanium Backup and we want to restore them with data (save games) and be linked to the Market for updates.
What's the correct way to handle this?
I've created issues before where some apps don't list in 'My apps' in the Market, and don't auto-update unless I search for them at which point it says 'Installed'.
I usually enable airplane mode immediately after the Google account setup, reboot, restore from titanium, reboot, and then turn the radios back on.
ClockworkMod Rom Manager. Its the best tool there is. yu can flash roms by pressing a simple button.
make sure you understand the difference between clockworkmod and titanium backup before you start modding your device. CWM will restore your phone exactly to how it was when you made the backup, everything from your screens, apps, setting, contacts, call and text logs. When you restore with CWM it will erase everything that was done after the backup point. Another thing to keep in mind is that you cant choose to restore specific things in CWM like you can with TB, you have to restore it all in one shot.
TB will restore apps, system apps and data associated with those apps. TB can also be used to backup settings, wifi access points and bluetooth pairings.
So if you get a bootloop or softbrick you have to use CWM. You need to do a factory reset/wipe before you flash a new rom, this is when you would use TB. Use TB to restore the apps, data and settings.
SMSbackup and calllogbackup in the market is also good for backing up or texts and call logs if you want to keep them. google will backup your contacts if you allow google to do this but you can always just save your contacts on your sim card
never ever restore system apps and data.
Especially if it was meant to be a full wipe.
Even then, clean start is always best so wipe and stop reporting bugs if you didn't do a wipe.
s2d4 said:
never ever restore system apps and data.
Especially if it was meant to be a full wipe.
Even then, clean start is always best so wipe and stop reporting bugs if you didn't do a wipe.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
On that note, some data for system apps can be safely restored - just never do it as a batch process. If I'm going to try restoring any system data, I do another full nandroid first (just in case) and then restore data one at a time.
I'm shocked no one has mentioned this app yet. Appextractor let's you restore things from your nandroid, Obviously some things shouldn't be restored, but many things can be safely restored.
EKnofsky said:
I'm shocked no one has mentioned this app yet. Appextractor let's you restore things from your nandroid, Obviously some things shouldn't be restored, but many things can be safely restored.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The only problem I had with app extractor is the amount of SD storage space it uses - and doesn't automatically clean up. My nandroids are already ~2.7GB - I don't really want the whole thing also stored uncompressed. I quickly run out of storage space that way.
Oh, and it's painfully slow.
AppExtractor is useful if there's an important app you forgot to back up in Titanium, but doesn't really make sense to me as your primary restore method.
Isn't the Titanium data wiped when a new ROM is flashed? I assume that before flashing anything, copy the /sdcard directory to another computer?
And after flashing a new ROM, I assume that Ti has to be downloaded first in order to restore the other apps
thereddog said:
Isn't the Titanium data wiped when a new ROM is flashed? I assume that before flashing anything, copy the /sdcard directory to another computer?
And after flashing a new ROM, I assume that Ti has to be downloaded first in order to restore the other apps
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Unless you're using the factory recovery, the Titanium data will remain intact. You will have to reinstall Titanium from the market - or use the tool built-in to Titanium to create a flashable *.zip. Just flash that *.zip before you boot your ROM the first time and you'll have Titanium pre-loaded.
use adb! works without root
adb backup [-f ] [-apk|-noapk] [-shared|-noshared] [-all] [-system|-nosystem] []
- write an archive of the device's data to .
If no -f option is supplied then the data is written
to "backup.ab" in the current directory.
(-apk|-noapk enable/disable backup of the .apks themselves
in the archive; the default is noapk.)
(-shared|-noshared enable/disable backup of the device's
shared storage / SD card contents; the default is noshared.)
(-all means to back up all installed applications)
(-system|-nosystem toggles whether -all automatically includes
system applications; the default is to include system apps)
( is the list of applications to be backed up. If
the -all or -shared flags are passed, then the package
list is optional. Applications explicitly given on the
command line will be included even if -nosystem would
ordinarily cause them to be omitted.)
adb restore - restore device contents from the backup archive
example: adb backup -all -system -shared -apk
nitramz said:
use adb! works without root
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for this. I had seen adb backup alluded to elsewhere but not a concise post detailing the usage. I'd rather not have to use my computer to handle backups, but it sounds like a pretty cool option.
Try MyBackup PRO. It does exactly what you need. I have used it before and it is good.
How does one do a full backup of their phone? I see no option in twrp for backing up the internal sd card, and i see support for that was removed from cwm back in version 4 ( unless I'm reading this wrong )...
I know I can just copy it off to my pc or what ever, but that's not really a clean solution for doing backup / restores across multiple roms as it will just involve another process and make it so i have got to be at home to swap..
Any solutions?
Depends if your phone is rooted or not, I believe a rooted phone can do more of a "full" backup but what I usually do is backup all my photos and songs with USB to the computer. For SMS apps and app data and system settings and data I personally like two apps - My backup pro and Titanium Backup PRO which requires root. Just visit the apps in the play store to compare. I recommend doing pictures and music manually cause I've had several issues with the backup apps doing my photos as when I restore them they are corrupt
Hi together,
just as a disclaimer, I don't really have knowledge in this field (custom roms etc), but I'm willing to learn and understand what is going on.
I have the Moto G5 as my daily phone with the unofficial lineage 17 from the xda-forum. It's not rooted. Now i saw that the g5 got official support for LOS18, so I wanted to upgrade. However, I had some important files on my phone, so I wanted to do a backup (with twrp), which i did on a different sd-card than the one I was using as storage. Or so i thought. The upgrade itself wasn't really a problem, at first i forgot to wipe the phone, but i realized right after the installation, wiped it accordingly to the instructions and did the installation again. The phone booted without a problem and everything seemed fine. I encrypted the phone accidently, i thought it was the lockscreen pin. But it wouldnt recognize the sd i used as storage on the previous version. Because i had pictures, music etc on the card, i wanted to restore my backup to use the phone as before. Well... to my surprise, on the sd i used to back up i couldn't find it, but strangely there were now two versions of a backup i made some months ago, only different in the timestamp (not the date) in their filename. I didn' know if one of them was the one i made, or if i had made two backups back in the days. I was confused, but i chose on of them at random and restored it. It seemed to have worked, it booted to the familiar lockscreen i set up a while ago. But then: it wouldnt accept the pin, even though i knew it was the right one - at least for the system i have used the same morning. I had to delete the lockpin.db (or how it was called) via twrp to acces the phone again. The former uncompatible storage sd now got recognized and worked, the phone showed all the apps i had before, i was still logged in in all of them etc. But: i made a photo, wanted to look at it in my gallery app, and i briefly saw my albums - then they vanished and only the photo i had taken was there. So now all the pictures, music are gone from the sd. Some funky things are different, the swipe directions for the "recent apps" and "back" buttons on the fingerprint sensor are switched and i cannot find the menu to change them. That's the story.
Here are my questions:
The backup i made - why wasn't it called with the proper date and time? Or have i deleted it somehow due to my wiping mistake? but it was on the sd... ?
I now assume i restored the old backup with a different lockscreen pin, and thats why the pin i thought was correct didn't work. But some apps which i hadn't installed at the time i made the backup where there and with all the recent data. Doesn't that mean the sd has some kind of image of the system or rather the apps themselves stored? but why are the pictures and the music gone? Is there any chancce to get it back? Can I upgrade to LOS18 and use the same sd as storage without the need to format it?
I'd like to learn what the mechanisms behind all these happenings are and would be glad if someone could explain it! Thanks in advance!
Twrp backups do no backup personal files - This includes music pictures and documents. These must be backuped up yourself to a pc, external device or the cloud.
TWRP backups do backup the following for example
System - your current rom
Data - apps and their data of your current rom, phone settings
Boot - Kernel
Never restore data on a different rom. The data contains apps and settings for your current rom and restoring this on a different rom will likely lead to a bootloop or an unstable device. This is why you had issues with passwords.
In regards to personal files - if you have formatted data of an encrypted device then it removes encryption and thus formats internal storage. Anything on this will be lost.
If you are changing roms you need to format data and then install everything again via the playstore (or manually via apk)
You can use 3rd party apps that backup apps and data but I advise against this as what it restore may be unstable on a different OS
As with the twrp date I assume twrp assigns the correct date. The file would be lost if you backup up to internal storage and your formatted data. I don't know what happened to it if you backed up to an external device.
Hello,
since Titanium Backup which I used for years seems to not work anymore, I am now looking for any other possibilities to transfer my apps+app data and also some system settings like wifi passwords/APN data, BT connections and such.
With TB this was always well working for me.
What I have tried:
OAndBackupX -> I enabled "special backups" and tried to backup wifi, but sadly it just creates a new folder for the wifi backup (special.wifi.access.points) with a properties file. However the subfolder, where the backup should be present is empty.
So this solution doesn't seems to work, at least not on my phone with Android 8.
I also tried to do backups of some apps, however it looks a bit strange to backup an app that shows as 25mb and the base.apk which gets created for it is only 9mb (and no other file besides that, although everything was ticked for backup)
How is everyone here doing this when switching from one phone to another (especially for access point data and data of apps)?
Syncing wifi passwords to google cloud I somehow do not want (even if they're encrypted) and the issue with app+app data is still present then.
Annil said:
Hello,
since Titanium Backup which I used for years seems to not work anymore, I am now looking for any other possibilities to transfer my apps+app data and also some system settings like wifi passwords/APN data, BT connections and such.
With TB this was always well working for me.
What I have tried:
OAndBackupX -> I enabled "special backups" and tried to backup wifi, but sadly it just creates a new folder for the wifi backup (special.wifi.access.points) with a properties file. However the subfolder, where the backup should be present is empty.
So this solution doesn't seems to work, at least not on my phone with Android 8.
I also tried to do backups of some apps, however it looks a bit strange to backup an app that shows as 25mb and the base.apk which gets created for it is only 9mb (and no other file besides that, although everything was ticked for backup)
How is everyone here doing this when switching from one phone to another (especially for access point data and data of apps)?
Syncing wifi passwords to google cloud I somehow do not want (even if they're encrypted) and the issue with app+app data is still present then.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This was the biggest pain in the ass. I tried plugging my old phone into the new phone but my old phone died midway through so I basically just started fresh. it sucks I have been doing it all last night and this morning and haven't finished. I did use sms back up & restore to get my text messages other than that everything is fresh and annoying.
No one else facing issues with backup/transfer? How is everyone transferring nowadays their appdata and access points and such? Really curious....
Got two phones here (Pixel 6 + Pro) waiting for transfers and I am still not sure how to accomplish completely...
Glad about any inputs!
A lot of people are recommending Swift Backup which is supposed to be the successor to Titanium Backup. I haven't tried it myself though.
If I understand correctly, Swift Backup also requires root to restore app data, network settings etc.
The best backup/restore solution I found was Google One's built in. It just works (albeit not as well as, say, iOS, and definitely not up to the level of Swift/Titanium). Without root, sadly, you won't have many options as you're limited to the APIs Google provides, which themselves are limited. Swift works this around by "manually" backing up all the files/folders for every app.
I do have google one, but sadly most apps I would require, get only backed up for the APK but not the data
Is Titanium Backup now deprecated for latest Android? I have Android10 on a car head unit with a very customised oem Launcher. I managed to root it with universal root from here and Magisk (Thanks). Titanium shows me all the installed apps and bloat with sizes - great!. I want to make a backup of an App in the oem system folder before deleting it. I seem to be able to create a backup on mnt/sdcard, but I can't delete the oem app?
I have 2 system folders, System\ and system (root). They appear mirrors of each other and if I go to system(root) /oem/app/*My bloat app, I can delete it with FX root file browser. But not if I go to folders inside System\. Is this something to do with how Magisk roots and can restore to non root by creating a mirror folder? I used TB to make a backup of this bloat app and it worked. But after deleting the app successfully with a file browser the TB backup folder was empty - is this normal? With one pre-installed (Russian!) nav app I didn't need or trust, I recovered 4.5Gb of memory with more oem apps to look at.
For now I can use TB to locate bloat apps I want to remove with a file browser but I really wanted to back them up first and delete from within the app. Is TB trying to delete from system\ where access seems denied, rather than system(root) where I can delete files with a root explorer? Any help appreciated - Thanks
TB is pretty much dead...
i started using Swift.. and also https://forum.xda-developers.com/t/...mate-app-manager-debloat-tool-tweaks.4147837/
Thanks, I was guessing that from the age of posts in this thread. I started off thinking I wanted a full Nandroid backup but that requires a customised TWRP partition and AFIK this car head unit with its OE launcher doesn't seem to follow the partition structure I'm used to in phones. It has 3 external USBs and I can't get it to do anything with adb and a pc connected. The USBs are only active towards the end of boot. However, their factory image and unversal root seems to get picked up with the same 'Upgrade' screen messages from the folder Isec_updatesh. I don't know what I'd do if I bricked it, although I have found the OE Boot.img file packed in their update folders.
Thanks for the link to bloat removal. Nandroid backup creates a full rom image whereas most other backup apps seem to only backup apks and not system files. Android car head units are heavily customised with many added hardware based peripherals so a full backup is important to me. Adb might offer a solution, but as I said, even in developer mode I can't get the USBs to talk to a pc which I assume is because there isn't the usual recovery mode, unless it's on button press combos I haven't found yet? There is a recovery to factory reset, but it's an option in their launcher so I'm guessing it's not in the usual Android recovery partition?
OK I took a quick look at ADB AppControl. First I need to establish an ADB link from PC and I'm struggling with that. Second it does what some other non-root apps do which is to hide the bloatware and stop them running when my objective is to take the 16Gb+ memory they filled from 32Gb and recover memory by deleting bloatware and apps I don't need. There's a tendency now to sell these Chinese car head units with all the GAPPS and many more pre-installed. Unfortunely, most require a mobile network connection to function. I'm not interested in their Satnav, Google maps, Facebook or other social media apps they threw in. The one thing going for me now is I'm running AFwall+ which is the best reason for rooting a Chinese sourced device to stop data leaks to them or Google.
As I ran their factory 'update' I could see all these apps getting installed. If I was clever enough to understand how the Android 10 install 'Manifest' (my words) worked, I would prefer to edit out entries for OE apps in their installer, if it was possible?