Root Nandroid warning: Make sure you have enough free space on your sd card

[rushmore]

When nandroid does a back-up, it does not error out or warn if the card runs out of space. It will go through all of the back up steps and even produce an MD5 parity check, but it is checking the file created- NOT the actual targeted files as part of its verification process (only the parity of the final file created).

I discovered this (almost) the hard way, but noticed that my card showed zero space. The back-up should have been about 850mb, but was 395mb. I removed some files from my sd card and repeated the process and then did a titanium back up of apps.

Shortly after backing up, I tried to install the King #2 kernel and my Inc got stuck in a boot loop. Had I not caught the Nandroid back-up issue, I would have been in a rough situation.

The sad thing is I have a 32gb card, but is loaded with PSX games, other game roms and MP3's. Even without this stuff and a smaller card, several nandroid back-ups can accumulate and take up more space than you expect.

added: I am not sure if Titanium also does not verify the targeted files after a back-up.

In summary: Check you card for space before backing up stuff!

 

[ArmchairBear]

I assumed (wrongly) that the devs who made the Clockwork mod recovery would have some kind of check for disk space before running the backup. Good post. Maybe should be stickied... for a while at least until there's a fix or warning message shown before the backup is run.

Maybe there's no way of estimating disk space before the actual backup is made, is there?

 

[DIncmanDan]

I had this issue, I had to restore and the backup was incomplete, took me a while before I figured out the problem. I ended having to restore to a way earlier backup, it sucked so bad that I always make sure I have enough space...

 

[Dsoto87]

Wow your backups are huge. Mine average about 320mb. Thanks for the tip though

 

[colonel51]

That's huge? My backups are usually 1.2 gb! Of course, I do have over 400 apps...
Anyways, I'm backing up right now and I only have 914 Megs free. What should I do? Just wait it out, delete it, and try again after clearing enough space? Or can it cause damage?