Best app/data restore method when switching between ROMS

[Guest Bisonator]

Hi folks

First off, many thanks to Paul and all other contributors for their excellent work on first rooting the Desire and now issuing these great custom ROMS. This site is definately my favourite find this year! Signing up was a no-brainer! :lol:

I'm a bit of a noob to the android scene, but I'm a firm believer in modding/getting the best out of any new gadget, so my shiny new Desire is no exception! :D

I've been using MCR r3.1 for a few weeks now and it's great. I've employed Koush's awesome ROM Manager and fake flash method/recovery to flash and perform my nandroid backups to ensure that if the worst comes to the worst, I can roll back to my stable MCR r3.1.

What I'd like to ask about is when you have installed a new ROM like the r20 froyo (which I've been experimenting with today), what's the best way to replicate/restore your setup from your stable/favourite ROM (in my case r3.1)? I've used Titanium Backup for a while and figured I'm best off only backing up the user apps (otherwise I'll be restoring system items from a 2.1 ROM to a 2.2 one, which doesn't appear to be good!).

What process do the rest of you use? Am I alone in only restoring user apps? Or am I foolish to even be doing that? Should I just re-install everything from the market and once I've got it all running smoothly create a Titatium backup of that which I can then restore for any froyo ROMS?

Any thoughts would be much appreciated and if it's been asked before and you're all bored of such questions, I apologise in advance and just ask that you point me in the right direction! :D

Bisonator

[Guest xTc is loVe]

I use MybackupPRO for Backup/Restore of Apps (data included) with this app i backup/restore my shortcuts/widgets, too.

More i say not to backup because you maybe hold errors in there. More u dont need to backup for a fresh install ;-)

Dont forget Nandroid =)=

[Guest Bisonator]

Hi xtc, thanks for that. Maybe I'll check out mybackup pro. :lol:

So is it worse to try to restore apps/data to different ROMS than to just start again and download/setup everything from scratch? I've seen comments across the forum that hint at v2.1's data not being the same as what v2.2 would create, so restoring it would cause fc and other issues.

Thing is, I thought this type of scenario is what mybackup pro and titanium were designed for?

Cheers

Bisonator

[Guest spammyspam]

Apart from using SMS backup and restore for messages, I plan on doing it old school manual style. I'm guessing that'd be easier than trying to move settings across automatically. Besides, it'll give me a chance to clear the cobwebs.

[Guest rafa1282]

How do I know if A2SD + is working properly???

[Guest tommo123]

presumably, just install large apps. white noise, google earth, a few games etc

[Guest Bisonator]

Well I've been running r20 today and slowly just manually re-installing things as I get chance. Decided to just do it the old-school method for now. :lol:

All seems stable so far too. Only had one fc of the market when I tried queuing up a load of apps at once!

Once Delia calms down, I'll update to r21 and try to restore a titanium backup of my apps from r20.

Bisonator

[Guest Bisonator]

Just in case anyone else is wondering about doing the same...

I've just updated from r20 to r21 without a wipe and all seems well so far. Added the Youtube app back into my bake this time too. Started to miss that pretty quickly!!!

Looks like a wipe is most useful when you've moved between major versions and isn't needed for incremental of same version.

When I moved from r3.1 to r20 I re-installed all apps from the market again and then restored their data only using Titanium. That worked out nicely too. Meant I didn't need to go through everything changing all the preferences again. Expecially useful for Gentle Alarm as I didn't have to set up the 4 (quite specific) alarms I have.

B