Root First Rom rooted for a long time

[StrifeJester]

So I have been careful with my Droid because I use it heavily for business and didn't want to risk having some issues with Roms and being unable to use the phone reliably. I am eligible for a new phone so I figured its time to take the plunge and load some new Roms until i find one I like. Trying to hash out recovery details though. There are some good threads here but nothing quite to answer my main concerns.

I have noticed Titanium Backup has an option to create an update.zip. If I create this file take it off my card and save it can I just place it back on the card and use the phones recovery mode, wipe data and then restore it to exact image of what I had when I ran it? Also I am thinking of making an image of my SD Card so that I can restore that as well so the phone is truly identical to the when the backup was run. My plan is to Wipe the card the card when I install a ROM so that it is like having a brand new phone with that ROM factory installed. Unless there is an application that can do this for me and allow me to go back and forth in such a manner. I like the of Dark Edge right now and am thinking of going with that one if anyone has any suggestions those would be greatly appreciated.

 

[corbinator]

I have TiBu, but I don't use it for backing up the whole ROM. Rom manager is excelent for making backups as you can NAME the backup. Very handy as I have a serious case of CRS and trying to remember a date as which backup I want is darn near impossible. See post here http://androidforums.com/droid-all-...ted-need-some-help-though-noob-obviously.html for my personal version of a how to. As for wiping your SD card and stuff I don't know but there are LOTS of info in the stickied post about all that.

I'm relatively new at Rom'ing, but personally after trying a few I just like to stick with vanilla (as I won't use anything but launcher pro so there's pretty much no point in a new rom) but I did install a 1.1GHz kernal and really that's all I want. Smokin fast and just the way I like it. I do use TiBu to back up all my apps and sys data so when I try a new rom I can just restore all my old stuff and settings, or just the stuff I want to the new rom, since like I said from what I've seen so far most rom's (albeit usually with a better kernal and a few custom apps) are just themed launchers.

No offence to all the dev's out there doing all the hard and fantastic work, but I just love my Launcher pro too much. Now before y'all go get the pitchforks and torches, I know there is much more involved than that, but I was trying to not make this a disertation.

 

[StrifeJester]

OK so time to install ROM Manager I guess. So far I am kind of in the same boat I am happy with the phone as it just want a different theme and a faster kernel would be nice. I am also working on documenting my steps because a lot of the guides I find seem to have holes in them. I want a concrete solution in good step by step form. This way if before and after if I go "I want my phone like it was 20 minutes ago I can. This seems to be the hardest information to find. I know it has to be possible to have something that is an image there have been disk imaging tools for yours for everything out there. That I think is the biggest thing I want and it sounds like ROM Manager does that. I can save a file that is 100% of everything I had/have. I know bundling this file with a copy of my SD Card. I am kind of anal about this stuff. I do it on my computer too I run Acronis constant Protection and snapshot my system nightly or before a major install. I love the control of being able to have things back to exactly what they were.

 

[The_Chief]

In ROM manager there is an option to "Backup Current ROM". You can name the ROM whatever you want (I use date and ROM Description) and then it will create a nandroid backup... a complete mirror image of your phones state. That way, if something goes awry or you don't like something you did, you can go into ClockworkMod Recovery (x+power) and restore the nandroid. It will be like you never touched it, right back to the state it was in the instant you made the backup.

For that reason, I backup early and often, and before I make any major changes. Since the nandroids are fairly BIG, I keep a lot of them on the PC and leave an important handful on the phone's SD card.

 

[StrifeJester]

Maybe I am just being anal but does it pay to copy the SD Card contents. I mean it only contains the data for the applications that are installed but I am thinking since I will have the same apps installed on multiple ROMs I may want different settings for some of them. Obviously leaving things like the media folders would be OK for me but I am more worried about a non default setting screwing something up in the ROM.

 

[The_Chief]

When installing a ROM and wiping the phone, your SD contents are NOT TOUCHED. I copied my SD card to the PC (took hours) as insurance against a failing card, but ROMming won't affect it at all. Did that answer your question?

I understand your concern about an app setting on the SD card messing something up, but I have experienced just the opposite. Saving my apps and data (especially the homescreen backup in LauncherPro) to the SD card speeds up the process. I've never had a conflict.

 

[StrifeJester]

OK, sounds great thanks, as a precaution I used Astro to create a zip of my entire SD Card, it took about 40 minutes only and was 800MB so if something goes awry I will just extract that over the top thanks again for all of the help.

 

[corbinator]

...Since the nandroids are fairly BIG, I keep a lot of them on the PC and leave an important handful on the phone's SD card.

So the backups are on the SD card. cool, didn't know that, although I guess I should have. haven't been concerned enough to look.

I copied my SD card to the PC (took hours) as insurance against a failing card...

Same Same here. So far the one thing that might fail on it's own that I can tell would be the SD card. Also I do it so when the 32G cards come down in price it's easier to transfer over.