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Root Seeking a perfect backup concept

notaguru

Android Enthusiast
Apr 22, 2010
304
7
S Cal
Eris rooted, with nonsensikal 16.1
Purchased MyBackupPro
Installed TitaniumFree
Stable and fault-free, long battery life, camera is great, Vlingo works perfectly, this is cellphone nirvana!

My objective is a *complete* backup, with settings, apps, home page, icons, layouts, etc.

Can I achieve that with nandroid plus MyBackupPro? Do I need the pay edition of Titanium? Something else?

Thanks!
 
I really think that, since you have it, MyBackup Pro is your best bet. Use that to backup online - you can set up an account with them. If you want complete, that's complete. The major issue with Titanium Backup (even the pay edition) is that it backs up to your SD card. Drop the phone in a river and maybe you'll be lucky that the SD will survive, but it may not.

I think with MBP you can both backup online and on SD - the advantage to that is that you can restore without worrying about a slow data connection. With root and MBP, it will do the same backup of the app+data and the market links that TB does.

Nandroid, of course, is just a snapshot in time. You would not be able to use that (without a lot of jockeying and using other apps) to restore a single app, such as an older version of an app that you just updated and the update does not work for you.

Titanium Backup does let you copy your backup database to a Dropbox account, but that is manual intervention required, the last I looked - it cannot be a regularly scheduled event, unfortunately.
 
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Oh, but I should add that you should test this. Let MBP run some backups for a few days (if you have it set up to run nightly). Then do a Nandroid backup, do a data wipe, set up your account and, after MBP reinstalls, try to run a restore and see if it works as you would want it to.

Testing a restore is an important step in a backup scheme that many people forget to do. Well, I know I've been bitten in the butt a time or two because I assumed that backups were restorable. (Not on my phone - I mean in general.)
 
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My objective is a *complete* backup, with settings, apps, home page, icons, layouts, etc.

Reading between the lines, it appears that what you mean is something more than simply a "snapshot of the phone in time" - it sounds like you mean "I want to be able to choose any ROM I please, and then import all my 'settings, data, and apps' into that (new) ROM with a single operation."

If you just want a snapshot in time, a Nandroid backup is sufficient.

Note that when it comes to comparing Nandroid against Nandroid, the backups that ROM Manager/ClockworkMod make are far more complete (they back up SD card extN partitions, /sdcard/.android_secure, as well as the recovery and cache partitions - and this can be important for 2.1 ROMs that use apps2sd, or external SD app storage or cache2cache in 2.2 ROMs). However, I'm reluctant to encourage ClockworkMod to users that are not familiar with disaster recovery using Amon_RA, because of glaring issues revolving around ROM Manager/Clockwork failing to perform signature checks on ROM files... newbs tend to get their phone wedged when they use Clockwork for ROM flashing operations. For nandroid backup/restores only though, it should be fine.

If you want the first scenario, there is not going to be 100% perfect solutions because different ROMs have different system pre-installed apps, and there can be conflicts between market apps and pre-installed apps, as well as some version dependencies in the data store. Partial solutions such as what doogald suggests are way better than doing things manually, though.

eu1
 
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Also, if you want to back up SMS messages and call logs, and then restore them later, I really, really like an app called SMS Backup+. It will backup SMS/MMS messages to your GMail account, in a label that you choose (by default, it's a label called SMS), and can also backup call logs. More importantly, you can restore these back when you wipe a ROM, or even Nandroid restore a ROM - it can and will recognize messages or call logs that already exist on the phone and will not restore a duplicate.

And, of course, you have them all saved on your Gmail to look up later on.
 
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glaring issues revolving around ROM Manager/Clockwork failing to perform signature checks on ROM files... newbs tend to get their phone wedged when they use Clockwork for ROM flashing operations. For nandroid backup/restores only though, it should be fine.

eu1

I keep a revolving set of ROMs nand'd on my phone, clockwork is, like you said, the easiest way to flip back and forth between them. It does allow you to flash other recoveries though I haven't tried it.
 
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Also, if you want to back up SMS messages and call logs, and then restore them later, I really, really like an app called SMS Backup+. It will backup SMS/MMS messages to your GMail account, in a label that you choose (by default, it's a label called SMS), and can also backup call logs. More importantly, you can restore these back when you wipe a ROM, or even Nandroid restore a ROM - it can and will recognize messages or call logs that already exist on the phone and will not restore a duplicate.

And, of course, you have them all saved on your Gmail to look up later on.

Ok, I just checked - MyBackup Pro will backup call logs, SMS, and MMS messages, so that may be enough. I would still do a test recover to make sure that it will restore when/if the time comes.
 
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Didnt read the whole post, but Titanium Backup allows you to back up your own data to your OWN Dropbox folder. You dont have to worry about losing it cuz dropbox will always have it :)

My only issue with this is that it's manual - there is no process to automatically schedule a transfer to Dropbox. I'd love to have the option to automate this while my phone is charging and I am sleeping. Backup processes that are not automatic are not as complete and thoughtless as processes that require manual intervention.
 
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