I have tried a lot of apps for my Android phone. One category that interested me a lot was backup and restore. The reason is simple: a phone is easy to lose or destroy, or someone might steal if from you. It’s important, then, to always have a backup of your data, just in case.

I will mention two apps that seemed to be very used – Titanium Backup and ROM Manager. The first can be used to backup/restore apps and settings, the second to backup/restore system images. Both have free and premium versions.

Since ROM Manages simply does not work correctly (read: it’a piece of junk) for me I can’t recommend it at all. Titanium Backup is useful and I do use the free version. Since the scenario I am trying to prevent requires more than Titanium Backup can do, the procedure I use is a little more complex than just running Titanium Backup. You can find it below.

Requirements:

• rooted Android device – I used unrEVOked to root my phone. You can use Freedom 4 Android – it includes all the tools you need (unrEVOked and many, many more).
• a decent recovery installed – I use ClockworkMod 3.x.x.x (I manually updated it from the version installed by unrEVOked).

Step 1. Run Titanium Backup and backup all your apps and data. Launch the app, then press Menu key > Batch > Backup all user apps + system data > Run the batch operation.

Step 2. Reboot your phone to ClockworkMod Recovery. Shut down the phone, then power it back on while keeping the Down button pressed. Use down to select RECOVERY and then press the Power button.

Step 3. Backup your ROM. Using the trackball or volume up/down, go to Backup and restore and select Backup.

Step 4. Allow mount of the SD card from a computer. Go to Mounts and storage and select Mount USB storage.

Step 5. Mount the SD card on your computer. If the card was not automatically mounted on your computer, you should open a terminal and mount it manually:

$ sudo mkdir /mnt/sdcard
$ sudo mount /mnt/sdc1 /mnt/sdcard

To find out exactly what the device is, take a look at your dmesg messages.

Step 6. Copy the backups to your computer. The backups are located on the SD card in the directoried /TitaniumBackup and /clockworkmod/backup. You should just backup everything, not just those directories, so you won’t lose pictures, downloaded files, ringtones and any other file you might have saved on the SD card in case you lose your phone.

Step 7. Umount the SD card from the computer and your phone. On your computer run:

$ sudo umount /mnt/sdcard

Then go back to the ClockworkMod menu on the phone and select Unmount.

Step 8. Reboot phone and enjoy. Press Back and select Reboot system now.

Step 9. Don’t forget to also backup the backup on your computer

After all these, you should have a full backup of your phone. If your SD card gets damaged, you can replace it and copy all your data back. If your phone doesn’t boot (you experimented and installed an app that messed it up) you can restore it with ClockworkMod Recovery. If you need to reinstall your apps (for example, you flashed a new ROM or changed phones), you can use TitaniumBackup to restore the apps data too.

Enjoy!

Image credit: laihiuyeung ryanne.

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