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[Q] Need reassurance about backup process

Hi. I've been using a ROM for the last little while (SlimICS), and I like it, more or less. There's a feature in another ROM (ParanoidAndroid, per-app density), that I'd really like to try out, but this ROM also has a lot of features I don't want (tablet mode) and doubt I would like. I use TWRP as my recovery...if I use TWRP to make a backup of System, Data, Boot, Recovery, .android_secure, and EFS, will I be able to flash this other ROM, then restore the backup to go back to my old ROM after I play with the new one a bit? Will the backup of these items bring me back to exactly how it was before, if I do a Wipe Cache/Dalvik Cache/Factory Reset?
Sorry if these questions are answered elsewhere, I'm just trying to make sure that my limited understanding of all this isn't incorrect, in my specific situation.

If you make a backup through recovery, when you restore, it'll be exactly where you left off, settings and all, when you shut the phone down.

When backing up in Recovery, you are backing up the OS and apps. This is called a nandroid. This does not backup anything on the sdcard.
Yesterday, I flashed a different kernel version on my NS. Before flashing, I did a nandroid backup using Reovery. Unfortunately, the kernel failed to load properly and I was stuck in a boot loop. I restored my backup I have done previously, and my phone was back where it was, few minutes before. It is very easy to do and backups/restores and verified using MD5 checksum.
Keep in mind that some apps put stuff on the sdcard. So if you flash your phone to a new ROM, upgrade apps and then go back to another ROM, it is possible that some apps won't work anymore. I've never seen this happen but this is a possibility.

Restore TWRP Backup?

Hi, just have a quick question that's been bugging me for a while now. If I have made a full backup using TWRP and I want to restore it, should I:
Fully wipe system and caches and then restore; or just restore right over my current ROM?

****, good question
Sent from my HTC One X using xda app-developers app

Restore takes care of wiping for you.

Piggybacking off the OP, sometimes when I try to restore my TWRP backup it fails, and then the only way I've found to get it working again is to do a boot loader factory reset, and then essentially start from scratch or load an older working backup. No problem, just a minor annoyance. Is there something I'm doing wrong or any advice someone can give me?
Sent from my HTC One X using xda app-developers app

Hydromea said:
Hi, just have a quick question that's been bugging me for a while now. If I have made a full backup using TWRP and I want to restore it, should I:
Fully wipe system and caches and then restore; or just restore right over my current ROM?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I always wipe everything before a restore, just in case
Better safe than sorry

Restoring a back up !
When restoring a back up from any recovery wipe everything just as if you were installing a new rom. Factory reset, cache, dalvik cache, system just to be safe. Factory reset wipes data and all cache but not system and if you do a factory reset and then try to wipe I think dalvik again you get an error but no harm done it just will not do it again. I usually do them all and then do the superwipe zip and that willl give you a good piece of mind that it is properly wiped. Also, I have noticed that using the external sd card seems to work best for installing roms or backing up and restoring back ups or anything else like mods or themes. Here is the superwipe zip in case anyone needs it.

Hydromea said:
Hi, just have a quick question that's been bugging me for a while now. If I have made a full backup using TWRP and I want to restore it, should I:
Fully wipe system and caches and then restore; or just restore right over my current ROM?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've done both, but I like not having reinstall all my apps, and reset all my ringtone, and that goes with a full wipe. so when ever i can i flash over. Just make sure your slashing the same rom over the old one.

You shouldn't worry about losing ANYTHING on a backup when you do a factory reset, because the backup houses all of the data and settings anyway.
All you do is Factory Reset, Nandroid>Restore, and your old backup will flash everything the way it was when you did a backup in the first place. Factory Reset is always wise, especially when you're fiddling with different ROM's based on different kernels or systems (AOSP/Sense).

XNine said:
You shouldn't worry about losing ANYTHING on a backup when you do a factory reset, because the backup houses all of the data and settings anyway.
All you do is Factory Reset, Nandroid>Restore, and your old backup will flash everything the way it was when you did a backup in the first place. Factory Reset is always wise, especially when you're fiddling with different ROM's based on different kernels or systems (AOSP/Sense).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ahh, this is true I recant my statement. I was mistakenly thinking about flashing a new ROM over an older version, not a buck-up. I feel stupid.

when restoring a nandroid if you've got the new HBoot I think you have to restore boot.img separately via fastboot. Is that right?

gunnyman said:
when restoring a nandroid if you've got the new HBoot I think you have to restore boot.img separately via fastboot. Is that right?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nope. I just flashed a bunch of roms yesterday and did restores with no issue. I think if your using the stock rooted 2.2 you are correct, but any other rom a restore works fine.

Not Restoring = Bad Idea
Hydromea said:
Hi, just have a quick question that's been bugging me for a while now. If I have made a full backup using TWRP and I want to restore it, should I:
Fully wipe system and caches and then restore; or just restore right over my current ROM?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have made the mistake of not wiping everything (excluding sd card) when changing ROMs or when restoring from a backup. This may be a little different because it was when I was switching to a new ROM on my brother's phone, but I tried to take the lazy way out and not restore everything. I really didn't feel like redownloading everything. I soon learned that this was a mistake, and his "phone" app suddenly disappeared. He was also unable to send or receive texts. This soon made the process even longer than I wished it to be because I needed to go back and restore everything again and get it back to normal.

Error While Restoring using twrp
I took a back up of everything using TWRP and then when i tried to restored its giving me error while restoring system E:Unable to extract tar archive . Please help

Are you trying to restore a backup from a different version of TWRP? For example, currently running 2.7.0.8 but backup was originally made using 2.3.3.1?
Sent from my Evita

error on backup restore twrp
hi i have a nexus 4 running 6.0.1 reserection remix, however when i do a backup on twrp then transfer
it to my pc its fine, but when i restore it it not going as a zip and its giving me this error, could not find meta-inf/com/google/android/update-binary' in the zip file. error installing zip file/sdcard/twrp/backups/01c237769c62991c.zip please help, thanks
Become a member of the w

WOW! After a good 3/4 days of frustration, thinking I had ruined my device, I finally got my TWRP backup to restore.
It's my first time using this software and the restoration process is truly amazing. I mean, my test messages were still there, even my browser history and last page loaded up in chrome were still there. I'm blown away.
The strange thing is that It didn't work when all 3 partitions were selected. When I tried it this way (as per the many step by step instructions that I read) my phone would load up a black screen with just the notification bar visible. I'd see my voicemail, sms, wifi and battery icons at the top, but absolutely nothing else except for a myriad of pop ups that read 'Unfortunately [app name] has stopped working'.
So I bit the bullet and did some trial and error with the partitions.
Turns out that when I only selected 2 of the 3 (I believe they were 'Boot', 'Data' and deselected 'System') everything loaded up just as it was before the backup, except there were only the stock apps available and no google services at all. .....Very odd.
So I did the boot to recovery method before turning the phone off (vol. up - Home - Power) which restarted the phone and strangely brought back EVERYTHING as mentioned at the start of this post.
You can probably understand my confusion here and while I'm VERY happy that it all worked out, I don't understand why it worked with only 2 of the partitions but not with the recommended 3 of them?
Can anyone shed any light on this?
---------- Post added at 01:16 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:02 PM ----------
debmikeshan said:
hi i have a nexus 4 running 6.0.1 reserection remix, however when i do a backup on twrp then transfer
it to my pc its fine, but when i restore it it not going as a zip and its giving me this error, could not find meta-inf/com/google/android/update-binary' in the zip file. error installing zip file/sdcard/twrp/backups/01c237769c62991c.zip please help, thanks
Become a member of the w
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hmmm. I'm definitely no pro at this stuff, in fact i'm very new when it comes to using TWRP, but this is what happened with me.
First of all, the backup that I did was simply a folder of files, not zip.
Transferred that do my PC, wiped my phone with TWRP and replaced the backup folder back into the TWRP/Backup folder. However, after reading up on how to restore on about 10 different android sites/forums, only 1 post shared the most vital piece of information.
You folder has to be in the 'serial' number folder that's located in the 'Backup' folder for TWRP.
When I put my backup folder just into the TWRP/Backup folder, the Restore section would only see the folder itself but the partitions were not available/listed for selection.
Once I placed my Backup folder into the TWRP/Backup/e1oog75 (that alphanumeric name is just a random example made for visual clarity) folder, my partitions were visible and available for selection right away.
Hopefully this helps somewhat.

[Q] Problems restoring backup/installing ROMs

Hi Folks, I hope this is posted in the right forum and sorry if I've missed seeing something similar already here.
I have a rooted Verizon GSIII on which I have been flashing custom ROMs and restoring nandroid backups without any problems for a while now (most recently I've been on Paranoid Android). Today I decided to try out Carbon ROM. I generated a nandroid backup using TWRP, then downloaded the ROM (the most recent nightly) and Gapps zip files using GooManager and flashed these after doing a factory reset. After rebooting the phone it seemed to start up OK... but it got as far as trying to find the network, which it unable to do. After selecting the skip option I then tried to sign in to my WiFi, but the keyboard didn't show up for me to type in the password. So I figured I'd cut my losses and just reboot into recovery and restore my PA backup. I was able to reboot into recovery and restore the backup but the PA backup pretty much did the same thing the carbon ROM did... just looped trying to find the network.
So... I'm not sure what went wrong or what to do next. Any suggestions???
I am able to boot the phone into recovery, but I'm afraid to start messing around too much without help as I'm no expert!
I do have the most recent nandroid backup and several earlier ones that did restore OK on my computer. Is there a way to flash any of these to the phone or to go back to stock?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers.

Wipe catche dalvik factory reset then flash fresh batch of rom and gaaps if that works well getting tru start up then flash ur backup thats what i did.. If that dnt work then u gotta go tru odin back to stock

I think I messed up I need help

Not really sure how bad it is but here's what I did
Last night I got an update notice for cm-10.2-20131102-SNAPSHOT-M1-i9300.zip I decided to install it.
Install went great. I went to sleep
Woke up I realized it was really unstable my phone would restart, applications would crash decided to go back to my old rom.
I went to software update and I ran 10.1.3 and my phone was stuck at the loading screen.
I then decided to take out the battery and use a backup to restore to Samsung's Touchwiz I did that.
I then used MOBILE ODIN to flash 9.1.0 worked fine so I decided to try and flash 10.1.3 back on it with MOBILE ODIN but the version of mobile odin was really old and it didn't work and now my phone is just a black screen unless I go into CWM.
So now I'm stuck in ClockworkMod and it says I have no backups to restore to...
I found the backups
/sdcard/0/clockworkmod/backup/
but when I press restore it says no files found.

You can download a rom on your computer put it on your sdcard then flash it in recovery. Just make sure the rom is for your model of phone. If you have a verizon phone you do not want to flash the i9300 file again you are lucky your phone even turns on.
Sent from my SCH-I535

jhoutz said:
You can download a rom on your computer put it on your sdcard then flash it in recovery. Just make sure the rom is for your model of phone. If you have a verizon phone you do not want to flash the i9300 file again you are lucky your phone even turns on.
Sent from my SCH-I535
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have an i9300 phone international version... oh god I just realized I'm in the verizon section. How do I flash with CWM? Because I already have a 9.1.0 cyanogenmod rom in my phone.

iaxx23 said:
I have an i9300 phone international version... oh god I just realized I'm in the verizon section. How do I flash with CWM? Because I already have a 9.1.0 cyanogenmod rom in my phone.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
First do a full wipe. Meaning format data, system, cache, and dalvik cache. The go to install, find your zip and go. Also with cm you prolly need to install the gapps too.
Sent from my SCH-I535

jhoutz said:
First do a full wipe. Meaning format data, system, cache, and dalvik cache. The go to install, find your zip and go. Also with cm you prolly need to install the gapps too.
Sent from my SCH-I535
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you so much. I was pretty scared... I heard the word brick like 3-4 times today I was about to lose my ****.
Thanks a lot!

i just did this myself and although i don't remember setting a password at all on TWRP, it's asking me one and i have no idea what it is. This is not allowing me to access data folder, sd card and such.
Can someone help me please?
---------- Post added at 06:57 AM ---------- Previous post was at 06:31 AM ----------
well, if i didn't type anything at all and cancel the password request, it seem to get by fine.
i was able to delete data and mount sd card.
my initial problem was that i kept trying passwords and getting errors, and then canceling the request.

Problem Solved.
You will just download a custom rom and install it with full wipe or use odin if you want to go back to original stock rom. It's just a softbrick, at least you can go to Clockworkmod Recovery, you can still recover your dead cellphone unlike to hardbrick which will go to a very complicated steps.

Phone is stuck in bootloop without even doing anything!!!

Please help me!!!
I had flashed Resurrection Remix OS, I don't remember which build. It was working fine, no hiccups. But suddenly today it switched off. When I restarted the phone, it was stuck in a boot loop for almost an hour. I was able to boot into recovery. Now I have no idea what to do because I can't perform a factory reset because I don't have any backup of my data. Will dirty flashing a new build help?
Any solutions? Anything will help me right now.

aryan.arora180 said:
Please help me!!!
I had flashed Resurrection Remix OS, I don't remember which build. It was working fine, no hiccups. But suddenly today it switched off. When I restarted the phone, it was stuck in a boot loop for almost an hour. I was able to boot into recovery. Now I have no idea what to do because I can't perform a factory reset because I don't have any backup of my data. Will dirty flashing a new build help?
Any solutions? Anything will help me right now.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes,dirty flashing a new build will work fine

Don't forget to create a Nandroid backup first!

Sometimes happened to me on latest build of RR also. Sadly dirty flashing for me didn't work, clean flash needed.

UPDATE: I flashed a newer version of RemixOS, and it is still stuck in bootloop. I cannot perform a clean install because the WhatsApp conversations are important and I can't afford to lose them. Any other ideas?

Create a nandroid backup, wipe everything thing except internal storage, flash the same rom, restore data from the nandroid backup?
---------- Post added at 10:50 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:49 AM ----------
aryan.arora180 said:
UPDATE: I flashed a newer version of RemixOS, and it is still stuck in bootloop. I cannot perform a clean install because the WhatsApp conversations are important and I can't afford to lose them. Any other ideas?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You mean Ressurection Remix?

Akshat2100 said:
Create a nandroid backup, wipe everything thing except internal storage, flash the same rom, restore data from the nandroid backup
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yep, tried it. After wiping data and booting it, it booted up fine. But as soon as I restored the data from the previous backup, it didn't boot.

Akshat2100 said:
You mean Ressurection Remix?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah... I mix both of them up

aryan.arora180 said:
Yep, tried it. After wiping data and booting it, it booted up fine. But as soon as I restored the data from the previous backup, it didn't boot.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You only restored the data from the backup right? Not the system or anything else?

Akshat2100 said:
You only restored the data from the backup right? Not the system or anything else?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes I'm sure

Akshat2100 said:
Create a nandroid backup, USE TWRP and backup as well, wipe everything thing except internal storage, flash the same rom,
---------- Post added at 10:50 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:49 AM ----------
1. Boot successfully, restore your messages which are important, and save them/back them up to another device.
2. Then do another full TWRP backup of your device. Now you will have the first save, with your messages but bad/corrupted other data, and a clean system save with your messages.
3. Then restore 1/2 of your TWRP data, say apps from A-M, reboot and see if it boots correctly. If so do a full TWRP save again.
4. Repeat #3, restoring 1/4 of the left over data from TWRP, say N-U, see it it reboots correctly...
It may take some time, but you will eventually identify the corrupted app data.
Another way, before the process above you could also go into your apps, and write down each app and the date and time they were last written to or updated. Chances are those last few written/ypdated to are the one/ones which corrupted your setup.
So doing steps 1 and 2, above and then restore all your TWRP Data, except for the last 3-5 apps and data with the most recent writes/updates. If that boots successively and correctly, you are closer, faster, to id'ing the culprit.
It's a pain.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

JeffDC said:
Akshat2100 said:
Create a nandroid backup, USE TWRP and backup as well, wipe everything thing except internal storage, flash the same rom,
---------- Post added at 10:50 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:49 AM ----------
1. Boot successfully, restore your messages which are important, and save them/back them up to another device.
2. Then do another full TWRP backup of your device. Now you will have the first save, with your messages but bad/corrupted other data, and a clean system save with your messages.
3. Then restore 1/2 of your TWRP data, say apps from A-M, reboot and see if it boots correctly. If so do a full TWRP save again.
4. Repeat #3, restoring 1/4 of the left over data from TWRP, say N-U, see it it reboots correctly...
It may take some time, but you will eventually identify the corrupted app data.
Another way, before the process above you could also go into your apps, and write down each app and the date and time they were last written to or updated. Chances are those last few written/ypdated to are the one/ones which corrupted your setup.
So doing steps 1 and 2, above and then restore all your TWRP Data, except for the last 3-5 apps and data with the most recent writes/updates. If that boots successively and correctly, you are closer, faster, to id'ing the culprit.
It's a pain.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you so much for the help!
Before you posted this, I had clean flashed like before and WhatsApp had found a local backup and I was able to restore my messages.
If it ever happens again(which I'm pretty sure it will) I'll try your method!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse