Backup and Restore (following wipe and ROM install)

[Guest Marvintheparanoidandroid]

Hi people,

I've tried to look around the site as best I can, but can't find the relevant thread which might aggregate such questions and answers.

I have already established that some updates of your chosen ROM will require and complete wipe and install. I have heard of people referring to "wipe and restore". What is this?

I have been backing up the contents of my phone via clockworkmod recovery. Is it possible after wiping to restore the important bits, i.e. apps, the apps data (such as gamesaves and whatnot), contacts, and all system settings?

I see a restore option which allows you to choose various settings which are presumably stored on the root of the phone (not SD card). Does one of these options (I think there's one called "data") do what I am describing? What is stored in these various directories?

Thanks for any help in advance! I hope there is some easy way to restore such data, as I'm yet to really see the benefit of custom ROMs, especially if it requires this much faff!

Thanks again. :lol:

[Guest Marvintheparanoidandroid]

Anyone able to answer my question?

Could mods move if this is better asked in a different forum?

[Guest tigris666]

Backup and Restore in clockword recovery mod refers to a "nandroid" backup. Which is a snapshot of everything on your phone, except for the FAT32 partition on your sdcard.

A lot of ROMs require you wipe certain parts, mostly the cache etc. A majority of this will be rebuilt by the new ROM on first boot.

As for backing up the "important" stuff, I assume you mean things like app settings etc. There is an app called Titanium Backup which you can run and it will backup all apps, settings etc to your sdcard, so they won't be wiped when you nandroid backup/restore.

After flashing a new ROM, you can restore what you want with Titanium Backup. Often restoring certain system settings will crash the new ROM, as you just overwrote some system settings probably in some old format. The app doesn't really give warning for this, so I mostly just use it to restore apps and leave system settings alone. Sure it means you have to re-enter your google account info and wifi info with every ROM flash, but that's easy enough.