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[Q] Phone Backup

Hey Guys, I'm a little bit of a noob here. I have had my captivate for about 6 months now and I started to get a little frustrated with the way the Captivate was set up compared to my old HTC Hero. I didn't have to root the Hero and could do anything with it I wanted. With the captivate it was another story. I rooted the new Captivate and it has been a wild ride. I follow the forums to see what is available after having Super User installed. I have to say I went a little crazy into the exploration of what i can and cant do. I learned what I cant do the hard way and spent almost 3 day's having problems with odin3 one touch flasher. Once i got everything back running to factory settings I decided to just set up the phone the way I like it and updated the config. for example I added the root access and updated the settings.db file to allow 3rd party apk installs. I than also deleted the wealth of useless crap At&T Preloaded onto the OS such as the apps and the 20 AT&T contacts. Fortunately now my phone and layout is exactly to where I want it. Unfortunately now I am afraid to perform other root mods on the phone and have to re flash the original factory settings on it and have to set it up all over again. I am not much of a programmer but do know end user support very well and was hoping that there would be a way to create a backup of the root directory so that in case I brick my phone (happend twice when I tried to replace the launcher program) I can just flash my backup so that I don't have to install apps, configure settings, and adjust the layout all over again? I was thinking of creating an update.zip would do it that i could keep on my sd card and flash it from recovery.
Can Somebody please Help!!!
Thanks,
Jay

Generally speaking, unless you use the same ROM, it is a bad idea to restore system settings.
Check out Titanium Backup from the Market. It works really well at backing up apps, data, and system data. Be sure to get the donate version so you don't have to manually install every single app (huge time/effort saver). It won't give you an update.zip file, but if you reinstall it and point it at it's backup folder, it can restore all of your data with minimal effort.
If you are prone to bricking your phone, back it up to an external SD card by entering "/<external sd>/Titanium Backup" as the backup path, replacing <external sd> with the real path (it's different on 2.1 and 2.2 ROMs).
Good luck.

Thanks, I actually already have Titanium Backup lite and i backed it up using the batch Backup all user apps + System Data but have no idea how to restore these backups if my phone bricks. I dont necessarily want to flash the phone to try it out. Any chance you know of where i can find out a little bit more information on how to restore backups with this app?

I also have the ClockworkMod Recovery where i have backed up my phone to an SD card. It says during the process Backing up system, data, datadata and than generates an md5sum. After this the phone boots back up and I was wondering if recovering using ClockworkMod is the same as flashing an update.zip rom but instead of using the stock version? Also this app seems a lot easier to use at there is an option to reboot into recovery and select roms

How to restore using Titanium Backup

I had recently rooted my phone and had installed Titanium backup using which I backed up all the apps+data.
Using Titanium backup I tried to remove a stock app provided by lg. During this process the phone rebooted twice and after that I saw that the phone had been reset to the factory settings.
I restored by following the below steps
Titanium backup > Backup/Restore > menu > batch > Restore > run Restore missing apps + all system data.
After restoring I observe that the phone is not being able to connect to any wifi, however previously when it was in factory reset it was being able to connect to wifi. Could anyone please help.

Which stock app did u remove?

sarus_b said:
Which stock app did u remove?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think it was one of "Dhingana", "Bollywoodji" or "AG indian newspapers". I had restored after that but currently I do not find "Dhingana" among the installed apps.

It would be the best of you would factory reset again. If you have a custom recovery, then reboot into it(either from ROM Manager or with phone off holding Volume Down+Home+Power) and wipe data, cache etc. If you haven't got a custom recovery, then power your phone off and use the key combination above. It should work.
And don't use "restore system data" option in Titanium. Better restore individual apps in the "Backup/Restore" without going into the Batch mode.
--
P>
Sent from my LG-P500 using xda app-developers app

Which setting/file are the system settings saved in? Things like the nav bar, notification bar, display, account syns, etc....? I know all about the pitfalls of restoring system data across different ROMs and for those cases, I just bite the bullet and redo all of those settings. But it seriously takes an hour or two to go in and redo all of those settings and if a RM is getting updated every couple of weeks, this just gets way too tedious for it to be worth it.
I know I can just do a system data + app and data restore for those cases and I do use that but there are times when I do not want every single thing restored and it would be nice to know which file all of those settings are saved in. I tried tinkering with just a few of those but I could not seem to find it.
Thank you in advance for any help, much appreciated.

And/or which file(s) cause the android.process.media to stop working and in general causes apps to crash? Also, does the Android ID cause/affect that? Thanks again.
[Edit] After much trial and error, I found the cause of the android.media.process and all apps in general crashing as a result problem(s). It was the file(s) Download Manager eng.prbassplayer and/or Downloads eng.prbassplayer inside Titanium Backup - Restore System Data selections. Just fyi for those wanting to know. I restored all other system and app data besides those and had no problems whatsoever with all Interface settings restored. I still did not figure out which file restored the Interface settings, if anyone could still shed some light on that.

This post relates to custom ROMs and restoring stuff with TB. Hoping someone can help.
I have been playing with Resurrection Remix for the last 7 months and have recently switched to Vanilla Rootbox.
With these two ROM's (and probably others) when an update is released a wipe/factory reset is required before installing the update. This causes a great amount of inconvenience as I have to manually re-setup all my shortcuts/widgets, email accounts, custom settings such as custom settings (toggles, etc...) ringtones and notifications sounds and so on.
All this takes ages and I'm getting a little tired of having to do it. There must be an easier way? Can this sort of stuff be restored with TB? I could be wrong but I don't think it can.
Many thanks.

tmarinos said:
This post relates to custom ROMs and restoring stuff with TB. Hoping someone can help.
I have been playing with Resurrection Remix for the last 7 months and have recently switched to Vanilla Rootbox.
With these two ROM's (and probably others) when an update is released a wipe/factory reset is required before installing the update. This causes a great amount of inconvenience as I have to manually re-setup all my shortcuts/widgets, email accounts, custom settings such as custom settings (toggles, etc...) ringtones and notifications sounds and so on.
All this takes ages and I'm getting a little tired of having to do it. There must be an easier way? Can this sort of stuff be restored with TB? I could be wrong but I don't think it can.
Many thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
try to save them in TB, if you can find in TB and save them it will be restored to any rom you will use in future

I was under the impression that those settings caused problems if formats were needed and especially between different ROM's?
And yeah, tmarinos I definitely her you there. I have stopped using those extra customizations for my ROM, though I can usually restore my home screen and app drawer settings safely, thankfully.
The developers of my ROM (Slim Bean) have started that they want to include a feature to restores those settings between resets, so hopefully that type of feature becomes more integrated as time goes on. Hopefully.
On another note, my phone's TB is having issues. When it runs an automated scheduled backup task, it keeps saying "insufficient storage" but if I manually run that exact same task it runs just fine. Anyone have any idea what that's about?
Sent from my GT-P3113 using xda app-developers app

[Completed] Backup apps from recovery (no root)

I've become a bit of a purist lately and don't really want to root my device (currently a Nexus 7 2013 running stock 6.0) and keep it as close to stock as possible. The only exception I've made to this is custom recoveries (because so far I haven't noticed any changes in OS behavior when a custom recovery is loaded).
So, my question is, how can I backup apps from a custom recovery? (with the ability to recover them individually - my recovery of choice is CWM, but I've used TWRP as well)
A little background on what makes me ask this and what I've tried so far ...
Lately I was tinkering with framework-res.apk and managed to get the system into an unusable state and was unable to fix it even by flashing the stick system image back to the device. Apparently my tinkering had messed up some bit of the user data that the system uses, but I couldn't figure out what bit to reset.
So, I went into recovery and used ADB to shell into the system and tar/gz'd the entire data partition up and then wiped everything other than the sdcard data (/data/media/0 on my device). The device booted back up normally and everything worked again (after resetting things up).
So, next I thought that if I just reinstalled some of my usual apps, start them up to let the basic structure get created, and then go into recovery and replace their data (/data/data/com.whatever.something/) with the backup I made, and reset the ownerships to the ownerships configured under the new install, that they should be back to the way they were before all this started.
But, no dice. Restoring /data/data/whatever is at best ignored by the apps I tried, and at worst causes the app to crash on startup (tried BeyondPod, Chrome, and Google Authenticator).
I've seen this process documented as working on the web. So, what gives? Did whatever framework-res.apk corruption I had actually mess up my other apps also (so that I essentially backed up a crashing/corrupted app), or does this process not work anymore?
Thanks in advance for any assistance or tips.

TechDude said:
I've become a bit of a purist lately and don't really want to root my device (currently a Nexus 7 2013 running stock 6.0) and keep it as close to stock as possible. The only exception I've made to this is custom recoveries (because so far I haven't noticed any changes in OS behavior when a custom recovery is loaded).
So, my question is, how can I backup apps from a custom recovery? (with the ability to recover them individually - my recovery of choice is CWM, but I've used TWRP as well)
A little background on what makes me ask this and what I've tried so far ...
Lately I was tinkering with framework-res.apk and managed to get the system into an unusable state and was unable to fix it even by flashing the stick system image back to the device. Apparently my tinkering had messed up some bit of the user data that the system uses, but I couldn't figure out what bit to reset.
So, I went into recovery and used ADB to shell into the system and tar/gz'd the entire data partition up and then wiped everything other than the sdcard data (/data/media/0 on my device). The device booted back up normally and everything worked again (after resetting things up).
So, next I thought that if I just reinstalled some of my usual apps, start them up to let the basic structure get created, and then go into recovery and replace their data (/data/data/com.whatever.something/) with the backup I made, and reset the ownerships to the ownerships configured under the new install, that they should be back to the way they were before all this started.
But, no dice. Restoring /data/data/whatever is at best ignored by the apps I tried, and at worst causes the app to crash on startup (tried BeyondPod, Chrome, and Google Authenticator).
I've seen this process documented as working on the web. So, what gives? Did whatever framework-res.apk corruption I had actually mess up my other apps also (so that I essentially backed up a crashing/corrupted app), or does this process not work anymore?
Thanks in advance for any assistance or tips.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Greetings,
Thank you for using XDA Assist. Here is the Nexus 7 (2013) homepage:
Google Nexus 7 (2013)
Here is where you can ask your questions:
Nexus 7 (2013) Q&A
Good luck!

I'm really looking for a generic solution that would work across devices (not just the Nexus 7). I've been using adb to backup apps for a while just for this reason. I can recover those backups on pretty much any device as long as it has debugging available in the developer options.

TechDude said:
I'm really looking for a generic solution that would work across devices (not just the Nexus 7). I've been using adb to backup apps for a while just for this reason. I can recover those backups on pretty much any device as long as it has debugging available in the developer options.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hello again,
Then you will want to ask for help here:
Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting
Good luck!

Nexus 5 Stuck in Google logo screen

Hi guys,
Unfortunately my Nexus 5 kinda died on me today and I'm almost devastated. The phone froze and then restarted (I pressed the power button a couple of time, so I’m not sure if I restarted it or it did it by itself) and stayed stuck on the Google logo screen. I tried a couple of things but none works – booting it in recovery -> wipe partition cache; shutting it down and restarting it; leave it like that and praying to God…
I need your help. What can I do in order to fix this and keep my personal data on the phone – apps (with their data – I have a couple of journaling apps that are very important to me), messages, pictures, history, calls and so on…
The most important thing for me is to retrieve this data, so a factory reset is out of the question. Is there any way I can fix this? If not, how can I recover/retrieve all my data from the phone?
P.S. I'm using the latest Android OS, without that last OTA update, the booloader is unlocked and stock...

You could flash twrp, create a nandroid backup, copy the backup to your phone for safe keeping, restore the backup to an identical phone (you'll have to change the serial number of the backup to the phone that will be used for the restore), and hope it all works.
If you don't have access to an identical phone, you could try wiping the phone and restoring the backup.
You could flash twrp and copy off the important data.
Lastly, you could flash a stock rom, flash twrp, and restore your data and apps.

audit13 said:
You could flash twrp, create a nandroid backup, copy the backup to your phone for safe keeping, restore the backup to an identical phone (you'll have to change the serial number of the backup to the phone that will be used for the restore), and hope it all works.
If you don't have access to an identical phone, you could try wiping the phone and restoring the backup.
You could flash twrp and copy off the important data.
Lastly, you could flash a stock rom, flash twrp, and restore your data and apps.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you for your kind and quick reply. I'm almost a complete android illiterate so I will bug you with a couple more questions, just for a better understanding.
So flashing TWRP means installing it...
1. Am I able to do this, considering the state of my phone? And will I be able to do the nandroid backup?
2. Is this tutorial good? http://www.xda-developers.com/how-to-install-twrp/
3. My phone is not rooted. Does this matter?
4. My phone has a capacity of 15 gb, of which approx. 1.5 gb were left free... Will I still be able to do the backup?
Thank you

The TWRP tutorial should be good - it's an XDA post...
You don't have to install TWRP, though it's a good idea unless you really don't want it. You can run it temporarily and on the next boot you'll be back to normal stock recovery. Booting temporarily will allow you to make a backup, but the risk is that you also back up the problem and then restoring the backup will also restore the problem - but it's worth a try.
"3. My phone is not rooted. Does this matter?" No, TWRP doesn't need root.
"4. My phone has a capacity of 15 gb, of which approx. 1.5 gb were left free... Will I still be able to do the backup?" Probably not - a backup is probably about 3GB, but if you manage to get as far as connecting to your PC and seeing your internal storage in Windows Explorer, you can copy the essential data (photos, etc.) to the PC and then do the backup and attempt the restore.
Press power & volume down simultaneously until you get to the bootloader screen with the green robot on its back. Connect the device to the PC - I'd recommend a direct laptop connection, not via a USB hub.
Start a CMD window and navigate to your PC adb/fastboot directory.
Type "fastboot devices" (no apostrophes) - if you're properly connected, you'll see something like "459uirgggg4 fastboot", which is your device id. A blank line means no connection.
To boot TWRP temporarily - "fastboot boot twrp.img".
To install TWRP permanently - "fastboot flash recovery twrp.img".
Once complete, use the volume keys to find "Reboot recovery". When you're in recovery, with any luck you may be able to see your internal storage in Windows Explorer, and you can at least retrieve your data. You could then try the restore, and if it doesn't work, a full installation of the latest ROM and rebuild your device from there (though Google automatically restores most of your apps if you had chosen that option).
Double-check these commands against other posts - I offer no guarantees, but at least a bit of hope...
Good luck.

Thank you! One more quick question, if I get as far as connecting and seeing my internal storage, would I be able to erase some data, in order to make room for the backup?

Yes, that's exactly what I meant. Photos are simple to identify, take up quite a lot of room, and can easily be transferred to your PC for safety and then deleted from the device. Anything free-standing (i.e. photos, for example, are independent of the app which captured them) and easily-identifiable, copy and delete from the device. Things like SMSs are trickier, since they may be held in not-obvious places or formats. If you take a copy to your PC, and delete to free space, you may have enough space for the backup, but as I mentioned you may just be backing up the problem as well as the system (backups don't tend to copy user data).

dahawthorne said:
Yes, that's exactly what I meant. Photos are simple to identify, take up quite a lot of room, and can easily be transferred to your PC for safety and then deleted from the device. Anything free-standing (i.e. photos, for example, are independent of the app which captured them) and easily-identifiable, copy and delete from the device. Things like SMSs are trickier, since they may be held in not-obvious places or formats. If you take a copy to your PC, and delete to free space, you may have enough space for the backup, but as I mentioned you may just be backing up the problem as well as the system (backups don't tend to copy user data).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Okay, here's the current situation - I managed to connect it to my pc and it's visible.
I saved my photos and cleared up some space. I now have 9 GB of available memory.
I tried TWRP (didn't install it though, as I receive an error, saying that it can't complete the command) and manage to boot it and enter the backup menu.
Unfortunately, it cannot backup my data, as it remains stuck on "updating partition details"...
Not sure what to do... Should I wait longer? It stayed like that for approx. 50 min, before I restarted it. Should I try a previous version of TWRP? Should I try a different program/method of doing a nandroid backup?
Also, there were options to backup my: system, cache, data, boot etc. Choosing to backup only my data would do the trick? As I said, I'm most concerned about my journaling apps, that were not backed up.
Anyways, here is something interesting that happened after I restarted it during the TWRP stuck backup process - the phone started and passed the google logo screen! And I managed to enter it. Things appeared to be normal and I was overwhelmed by hope. However, when I tried to open an app, it froze and started all over again. And one more detail, the battery was low, like 10%. It was low yesterday, too, when it died the first time. Could it be related? Do you guys make anything out of this? Should I proceed by backing up my data and flash a new OS?

Nice to see some progress...
The first thing to do is to get the battery properly charged. Some functions (I'm thinking specifically of encryption, which demands at least 50% charge plus the device plugged in) won't work properly on a low charge. It may not be the cause, but it certainly won't help if the battery is low.
9GB is now plenty to take an entire backup. The TWRP backup screen shows how much data is in each partition. I'm not entirely sure exactly what "data" does back up - I very much doubt (from experience) that it will back up things like photos, but as I said before some data is stored in obscure places and you may be lucky. Back up everything except cache - the defaults in 3.0.2.
Definitely back up EFS. Read around and see the havoc it causes if you have problems and don't have it backed up.
So... you temporarily booted into TWRP? Latest 3.0.2? And the "updating partition details" message was after you pressed the backup button? There shouldn't be any delay - my backups of 6GB on my N6 take only 5 minutes - the N5 is slower but not that much slower, and you have a lot less to back up. If TWRP still continues to be difficult, yes, try the previous version. Even back to a version 2 if necessary.
Try the backup when the device is charged, save it to your PC, and then reboot. Fingers crossed. Good luck.

dahawthorne said:
Nice to see some progress...
The first thing to do is to get the battery properly charged. Some functions (I'm thinking specifically of encryption, which demands at least 50% charge plus the device plugged in) won't work properly on a low charge. It may not be the cause, but it certainly won't help if the battery is low.
9GB is now plenty to take an entire backup. The TWRP backup screen shows how much data is in each partition. I'm not entirely sure exactly what "data" does back up - I very much doubt (from experience) that it will back up things like photos, but as I said before some data is stored in obscure places and you may be lucky. Back up everything except cache - the defaults in 3.0.2.
Definitely back up EFS. Read around and see the havoc it causes if you have problems and don't have it backed up.
So... you temporarily booted into TWRP? Latest 3.0.2? And the "updating partition details" message was after you pressed the backup button? There shouldn't be any delay - my backups of 6GB on my N6 take only 5 minutes - the N5 is slower but not that much slower, and you have a lot less to back up. If TWRP still continues to be difficult, yes, try the previous version. Even back to a version 2 if necessary.
Try the backup when the device is charged, save it to your PC, and then reboot. Fingers crossed. Good luck.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Dahawthorne, thank you! I managed to make a backup after following your suggestion regarding the battery.
However, I didn't do a factory reset... not yet. Something strange happened while I tinkering with it (basically starting it and shutting it down with a furry) - it entered the OS! And everything was there and seemed to be fine, I was able to access my apps and saved a couple of things. But... when I clicked on a web page, it froze again and I was back at square one. Could it be that I have too many tabs/web pages in the background?

If it's only Chrome (or other browser?) that's making it freeze, you might want to try installing a different browser.
In the meantime, given your situation, I'd concentrate on recovering all the data you want and copying it to your PC for safety in case you have to resort to a factory reset or full re-flash of the ROM.
In case you can't find the data for the reasons I originally mentioned, you could try the Play Store for backup applications - e.g. there's a good SMS backup app which will back up & restore your texts. There may be something similar for your journaling app.
(And what's a "furry"...? )

Restore nandroid on different device

Hi,
i need help. How can i restore a nandroid from one oneplus 6 on another?
I tried to do it but ended up in a bootloop to recovery.
Original phone is rooted (which shouldn't be a problem, right) and encrypted and secured with pin, fingerprint and face unlock.
Is maybe the encrption the problem, or has it soething to do with A/B partitions?
Both phones were on the same version of OxygenOS and i used the same version of TWRP.
Any solutions?
Thanks

kerngehirn said:
Hi,
i need help. How can i restore a nandroid from one oneplus 6 on another?
I tried to do it but ended up in a bootloop to recovery.
Original phone is rooted (which shouldn't be a problem, right) and encrypted and secured with pin, fingerprint and face unlock.
Is maybe the encrption the problem, or has it soething to do with A/B partitions?
Both phones were on the same version of OxygenOS and i used the same version of TWRP.
Any solutions?
Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
But why would you want to do that?
Why won't you just transfer all your important files over to the other OP6 and just start fresh. Restoring your apps doesn't take that much time and you'll probably waste more time on getting your original plan to work.
It could very well be that encryption causes issues when trying to restore a nandroid backup.

It's the little things like for example all my open chrome tabs, or the whatsapp images that will be messed up after restore. And so on. It's just so much easier to continue where I left off. No restoring of apps and settings and whatnot.

kerngehirn said:
It's the little things like for example all my open chrome tabs, or the whatsapp images that will be messed up after restore. And so on. It's just so much easier to continue where I left off. No restoring of apps and settings and whatnot.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
But you can just save and restore Chrome sessions as long your logged into the same account right?
And I don't know why you think WhatsApp images will get messed up? Sounds more like a bad experience you had which was probably caused by an unfortunate bug/glitch or an user error. The build-in backup feature of WhatsApp never failed on me and just makes a backup on your GDrive and restores it when you log in with your number again. Manually transferring the WhatsApp folder is an alternative that works fine too.
And what are you planning to do when you get a new device? You'll definitely have to manually restore things then so why can't you now, doesn't take a full day to do so and actually works without issues. But to sum it up, I think you are wasting time by trying to restore a nandroid backup on an other device than it's originally created on.
You also might want to look into Titanium Backup, Migrate or it's alternatives. You can use those two apps to backup apps and their data and possibly more and restore it on a fresh system.

kerngehirn said:
It's the little things like for example all my open chrome tabs, or the whatsapp images that will be messed up after restore. And so on. It's just so much easier to continue where I left off. No restoring of apps and settings and whatnot.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There are different apps for that such as Migrate, OAndBackupX or Swift which can backup apps as they are now and you can then restore them back to another device without any issues (particularly Migrate)