In kindergarten terms-how do I back up my N2A card?

gale65 · July 12th, 2012, 03:05 AM

I just upgraded to a bigger N2A and since it cost more (my first was bought with gift certs so it was essentially free-not so with this one) I'd like to back in up in case it wears out or something. I have been searching and reading but I still don't know how. Is there a dummies guide or anything?

probbiethe1 · July 12th, 2012, 12:57 PM

Are you wanting to backup the whole card like clone it? or do you want to back up all your setting and installed apps? If you want to backup your settings and apps I recommend titanium backup. It can be found in the Play Store and it works great.

gale65 · July 12th, 2012, 01:00 PM

I want to back up the whole thing so that if the card fails, I can just put all of it on a new card. I just got it so there aren't any apps or data installed on it yet. I'll have to figure that part out too-getting everything from my current card to this new one.

ecmasonjr · July 13th, 2012, 04:00 PM

You'll need to make an image of your card, and you'll need at least as much free space on your computer as the capacity of the card.

Download Win32DiskImager, just Google it, it's free and you'll find plenty of sites to download it from. Unzip the binary file into a folder, all the files needed to run the program will be in that folder.

Now put your card into a card reader and insert/connect it to your Windows computer. Open an Explorer window and look for a drive named Boot, make note of the drive letter your computer assigns to it.

Start the Win32DiskImager program by double clicking on the Win32DiskImager.exe file. A small box will pop up, the box on the right labeled Device should have a drive letter in it and if you don't have any other external devices connected it should be the drive letter of the boot drive. If it's not use the dropdown arrow and select the correct drive letter for your boot drive.

To the left of the drive letter is another box with a folder to the right of it. Click the folder and browse to the location where you want to save the image file. In the file name field at the bottom type in what you wish to name the image file and click save.

This is important. you will see four buttons on the bottom, the only ones you need to concern yourself with are Read and Write. If you hover your mouse over the button you'll see a description of what each button does. You want to use the Read button "wite data on Device to Image file". Push the button and wait for it to finish.

gale65 · July 14th, 2012, 03:59 AM

That worked-thanks!! At first the imager program kept popping up an error message but I did a search and found that disabling the floppy drive (which I don't even have but it was in the device manager anyway) fixed it. I was able to back it up. So now I just have to back up my personal stuff on my existing N2A and transfer it all over.

colchiro · July 14th, 2012, 08:52 AM

Let me get this straight...

You have a good, working N2A card with no issues?

You want to copy that to a bigger card so you bought another N2A card?

If that is correct, why didn't you just buy a regular (blank) sdcard (Sandisk) and use that?

BTW, you'll end up with an expensive N2A card that's the same size as the original, unless you can resize the last partition to use all the available space.

gale65 · July 14th, 2012, 11:38 AM

Yeah I didn't think of that until after I got it. But I did get it for half price, at least. So I can sell my 8 gb with no guilt this way. I wouldn't feel right selling it if I had just copied it over even though I know the N2A guys are just basically selling the card and the service of putting the files on it.

So why would the new one be the same size as the original?

eta: I think I'm confused. I'm not copying the 8 gb card to the 32 gb. I was only backing up the partitions (??) on the new 32 gb and then I will copy my books and movies to the new one. Or I'll transfer them via dropbox or something.

colchiro · July 14th, 2012, 09:41 PM

Ok, I misunderstood you.

If you image your first disk, then use those images on your new sdcard, you'll end up with the same size image there (exact copy).

You can wipe your sdcard and do a factory reset on your card after you sell it.

gale65 · July 16th, 2012, 12:40 AM

ok now I'm trying to back up my current data and settings. I downloaded and installed Titanium Backup but when I try to run it, it says something like 'searching for root' and then it says it can't open it. Is there another good backup app that will work for this?

eta: uninstalled and reinstalled and it's fine now.