Database Users

Synchronizing contacts!

Hi,
I need to do a hard reset on my device and want to store all my contacts somewhere safe so I don't have to manually input them all again. The problem is I don't use outlook on my PC. Is there any way I can pull them off the Exec and store them on my PC for safe keeping?
I would normally throw them on the SIM but there appears to be no tool to add them all at once and I am not manually moving 150 contacts myself
--
Sorry for the duplicate post, I didn't mean to put it in general

Does nobody know? There must be a quick way to save your contacts somewhere safe? What does everyone else do when they need to do a hard reset?
Is there a particular folder on the Exec that may contain all of my contents? I could then copy it onto my PC and replace later.

there is a way you can backup the contacts database, i cant find it tho, i dont think it was on this forum, but there was a deffinate way to backup the databases for this kind of work
soz cant give a proper solution

It was something about taking a backup of "pim.vol" from the My Documents folder, then fiddle around trying to overwrite the empty one after you've done your hard reset, but I can't find it either....

pim.vol is found the root directory of the device, copy to sd, reboot, copy back... supposedly, havent done it, but read it. you may have to show files in ROM.

simon_darley said:
pim.vol is found the root directory of the device, copy to sd, reboot, copy back... supposedly, havent done it, but read it. you may have to show files in ROM.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, I read this yesterday and tried it and it works a treat. I now keep a copy of pim.vol just incase. Good practice for those who don't know it exists

One tip - make sure you've set the 'Region' in settings back to your original one before you restore the file, otherwise it won't even let you start the contacts app! Had a moment of panic there myself last night...

What all in pim.vol Just contact or like SMS and MMS to?...
Coz I am trying to find a way to take a back up of my SMS, and I dont get any software working yet.

Contact list backup.

I have no idea how to get Active Sync to backup my contact list. Im trying to find a program where I can just copy and paste them to my computer and then back once im done updating to the newest cingular rom.
Active Sync gives me an error about outlook having a diffrent user name or something and for the love of god i cant figure it out. Anyone can help out? I just want to backup my phone numbers, nothing else.

here's the solution
on your root of device; you'll find pim.vol file; copy it on ur sd card (i tried to copy it on my computer but it didnt let me) so copy it on sd card ; reflash your fone; and copy it back to original location (overwrite new pim.vol when u flash it)
easy>>huh?

Re: here's the solution
smashfaq said:
on your root of device; you'll find pim.vol file; copy it on ur sd card (i tried to copy it on my computer but it didnt let me) so copy it on sd card ; reflash your fone; and copy it back to original location (overwrite new pim.vol when u flash it)
easy>>huh?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nice tip. I just had to wipe all my contacts before a hard reset as I couldnt find any way of backing up.
Cheers.

Re: here's the solution
smashfaq said:
on your root of device; you'll find pim.vol file; copy it on ur sd card (i tried to copy it on my computer but it didnt let me) so copy it on sd card ; reflash your fone; and copy it back to original location (overwrite new pim.vol when u flash it)
easy>>huh?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
what is my root of device? im dumb....sorry

Re: here's the solution
lbsportsdoc said:
smashfaq said:
on your root of device; you'll find pim.vol file;
what is my root of device? im dumb....sorry
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Root of device: is the root directory of your device; with built in file explorer or via active sync explorer, you'll see your highest level of directory structure (few directories you'll see are APplication data, Conn Mgr, documents & settings, windows etc; along these directories; you'll see few files like pim.vol and few other files with *.vol extension
I dont know what else to define for root directory structure; may b you pick some windows for dummies book and get idea from it
Cheers!!!!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

reflash?
Thanks sooo very much! one more thing! Reflash my fone? do u mean soft reset? or just sync it? then u say to recopy it and then overwrite the original? plz explain...I'm with you so far as copying pim file to my storage card...
thx for your patience! lol

Re: reflash?
lbsportsdoc said:
Thanks sooo very much! one more thing! Reflash my fone? do u mean soft reset? or just sync it? then u say to recopy it and then overwrite the original? plz explain...I'm with you so far as copying pim file to my storage card...
thx for your patience! lol
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Reflash means update rom - thats what the first poster was about to do. So if you ever update your rom or hard reset your device (i.e. return your device to factory condition) you have a backup of your pim.
Also you need to rename the new pim.vol to pim.vo before you can restore the backed up version as it wont overwrite that file using total commander file explorer etc...

nandroid back up problem

i have three nandroid backups and have never had a problem what so ever with them....seems like eversince i renamed them to keep track of them i tried to use them and they give me and error saying run via adb...does anyone one have any insight?

im an iddiot mods delete this

aauussttiinn88 said:
i have three nandroid backups and have never had a problem what so ever with them....seems like eversince i renamed them to keep track of them i tried to use them and they give me and error saying run via adb...does anyone one have any insight?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Actually the last time I tried to restore I had the same issue. Not sure what the remedy is, but I had to just re-flash the Modaco ROM I was running prior to trying out the 2.1 Rom. Wish I knew what was going on.

just figured it out...let me ask you this did you rename your nandroid backups?

aauussttiinn88 said:
just figured it out...let me ask you this did you rename your nandroid backups?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, I just have a ton of them in my nandroid folder but never changed any names.

It names the backup based on the source device serial number and the time the backup was made. This, I think, is how it knows which one is the latest. I had this problem once before and the trick was to create the following folder structure in the root directory of your sd card:
nandroid\[insert device serial number]\BCDMRS-20100205-2102\
Note the BCDMRS-20100205-2102 is just a folder name I took from my nandroid folder. If you created the nandroid folder as I describe and have just one backup you can use the same folder name I did and put your backup in it.
An alternative method would be to do a nandroid backup to recreate the paths on your sdcard and overwrite the contents of your equivalent of BCDMRS-20100205-2102 with your older backup.
I didn't get much sleep so sorry if this doesn't make sense.

aabbccddeeffgghh said:
It names the backup based on the source device serial number and the time the backup was made. This, I think, is how it knows which one is the latest. I had this problem once before and the trick was to create the following folder structure in the root directory of your sd card:
nandroid\[insert device serial number]\BCDMRS-20100205-2102\
Note the BCDMRS-20100205-2102 is just a folder name i took from my nandroid folder. If you created the nandroid folder as i describe and have just one backup you can use the same folder name I did and put your backup in it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Cool i will try that and see if it works. Actually im not all that pressed to backup any of my nandroids, so if this doesn't work I am going to delete all of mine and make just one backup to what im running now and hopefully that one will work if I ever need to restore. But thanks for the info.

You posted as I was editing my post. The alternate method might work better.

yea i just renamed my nandroid backups to the date in which i created them ie. 20100303 and that worked...weird i think but it works like a charm

Extract/Restore SMS/MMS, Contacts/Call Log, and Launcher Config. From Nandroid Backup

I was using Nexus S i9020T, CM7 nightly (a few weeks old) and for some reason I wake up this morning and couldn't get past the CM7 "blue circle" screen booting. I had about a month old backup but I didn't want to lose any recent data so I made a Nandroid backup.
Normally, to restore SMS or MMS from an old backup, one can just restore the nandroid backup, use a third party SMS backup program to backup the data to sdcard or gmail, restore or install new rom, then restore the SMS from the third party backup software.
However, in my case, I had a nandroid with data on it that I wanted to keep but that wouldn't boot.
So I did some searching and others have had this problem before but I figured I'd put it here for others that may have the same problem. I am not taking credit for this I just found various pieces of info around the web.
The solution is to use a utility called unyaffs. Unyaffs will need cygwin.dll. Yaffs is the file system that CWM recovery nandroid backups are stored in. Windows cannot read or mount this file system AFAIK.
Instead of compiling unyaffs for windows and installing all of cygwin, just use the attached pre-compiled unyaffs.exe and cygwin.dll.
Here's the process:
To restore SMS/MMS from a nandroid backup using MS Windows:
place unyaffs.exe + cygwin.dll + data.img in a folder
open command prompt in this directory (shift+right click -> open comand window here)
type: unyaffs data.img
the contents of the data.img will be extracted to this folder. wait for extraction to complete
browse to \data\com.android.providers.telephony\databases in the extracted folders
copy mmssms.db, mmssms.db-shm, mmssms.db-wal to sdcard
use root explorer to copy these three files to \data\data\com.android.providers.telephony\databases
To restore contacts/call log from a nandroid backup:
repeat above process for \data\com.android.providers.contacts\databases
To restore launcher configuration (only for stock Gingerbread launcher):
repeat above process for \data\com.android.launcher\databases
Note: Be aware that replacing the existing files with those extracted from the backup will remove the existing data so if you're not 100% sure what you're doing, change the names to mmssms_OLD.db or otherwise back them up before pasting the files from the backup.
Edit: Just thought I'd add, I also came across an app called AppExtractor but, despite the good reviews, the SMS/MMS restore didn't work for me.

if you have titanium backup, it makes it a lot easier to restore specific items from Nandroid Backup

AllGamer said:
if you have titanium backup, it makes it a lot easier to restore specific items from Nandroid Backup
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Doesn't work for migrating from Gingerbread to Ice Cream Sandwich for some reason?
I am going to give this one a try.
To the OP your a dead set legend! thank you
PS: Where the bloody hell is the thanks button on this forum? I can't find it

I will give it a try. Thanks.

where do i find data.img?

I'm on an SGS I9000 and made an SMS/MMS backup using titanium backup when I was on Gingerbread.
Now I've installed the "Onecosmic's ICS Port Android 4.0.3 RC3.1" and restoring the backup file using titanium (only data) makes my message app FC.
Jarmezrocks were you successful when restoring your SMS/MMS on ICS?
Does anyone knows how to restore them? From titanium backup I only have an *.apk.gz and *.properties files.
Thanks for any help.
Cheers

Excellent.. saved me a lot.. thanks for the tool

Great post. I wonder if there is a file extrator in Android like unyaffs?

I found out that you can restore SMS just by using Root Explorer.
The location is the same, just that the files are these ones:
mmssms.db
nwk_info.db
telephony.db
I tried and it worked only using RootExplorer and I extracted the files from data.ext4.rar

Does this need to be done using ADB? I have set a nandroid backup from a GB ROM and flashed ICS on the phone; however when I extract the data.img using unyaffs and browse to the mentioned directory, there are no db files whatsoever.
Could the nandroid backup be corrupted for some reason?
I am looking at the data\com.android.providers.contacts folder and I only see a lib folder with nothing on it.
Hidden system files are set to show BTW

I did this yesterday using Titanium Backup for my SMS/MMS
You need to go into Preferences and check the *Migrate system data [Experimental] option
Then you go to More - Extract from nandroid backup
There it is listed as Dialer Storage
You can probably do the Phone log this way to but I did look for it.
I would recommend you do a current backup of [SMS/MMS/APN] Dialer Storage before you attempt this.

Does this restore the whole smsmms database like with the sms.db file on the iPhone? I hate it when MyBackupPro has to restore my texts and the dates are all messed up and i've lost all my MMS'. And it restores them one by one, instead of just putting it in there all at once. Took me like an hour to restore everything.

I have an app for you.

I'd much rather save myself from all this tedious long-winded work and just use apk extractor to restore everything.

HAKA said:
I have an app for you.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks! Wish i've learned about this sooner. Would have saved me a lot of time.

This method doesn't work for me :/
I followed it exactly step by step but when I'm done and go to the Messages app, it's empty.
The same happens if I try it with appextractor or titanium backup.
I made the nandroid backup on CM7, and want to restore the messages to CM9+AOKP on ZTE Blade.

Thanks
THANK YOU !!!!
That was so helpful. I was migrating from GB to Nyx ICS RC5.0 yesterday and the application I used (super backup) failed to restore the Contacts.
Another app I used did that but missed allot of details (and also was damn slow).
I used your technique and it did the trick!!!
All data is there the same as I left it on CM7.2
You're the king
Thanks
[EDIT] just a correction Super Backup was able to restore the contacts but with missing details
It failed to restore the SMS
The other APP (forgot the name) restored the SMS (after ages) but contact associated with the SMS were completely messed up.

perfect
RichAP said:
I did this yesterday using Titanium Backup for my SMS/MMS
You need to go into Preferences and check the *Migrate system data [Experimental] option
Then you go to More - Extract from nandroid backup
There it is listed as Dialer Storage
You can probably do the Phone log this way to but I did look for it.
I would recommend you do a current backup of [SMS/MMS/APN] Dialer Storage before you attempt this.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This worked perfectly for me, got all my sms messages back from my nandroid backup.
Thanks!

thanks!
RichAP said:
I did this yesterday using Titanium Backup for my SMS/MMS
You need to go into Preferences and check the *Migrate system data [Experimental] option
Then you go to More - Extract from nandroid backup
There it is listed as Dialer Storage
You can probably do the Phone log this way to but I did look for it.
I would recommend you do a current backup of [SMS/MMS/APN] Dialer Storage before you attempt this.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I did this today when I had to reformat my phone because of a bootloop. I'm using an HTC Desire on MildWild. Worked perfectly for me and was able to restore my messages. Loads of thanks to you!

Thank you! This worked perfectly for me!

[Q] How to backup all system?

Finaly i get everything to work!Now i want to do backup to whole system and how to do thet?and where is save location thet file.I want to save that file on my pc.What is procedure?

Megasp said:
Finaly i get everything to work!Now i want to do backup to whole system and how to do thet?and where is save location thet file.I want to save that file on my pc.What is procedure?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If You have installed Clockwork recovery.
Then u can backup ur entire rom.
For this boot into recovery then go to Backup and restore and select back up.
after completing all procedure reboot ur device.
Connect your device in PC through USB (Storage)
Go to clockworkmod folder\backup
u can see the file with the date name....copy it to ur PC folder and you r done.
Press help if I helped you....

Ok ihave cwd.Just if later something go wrong,i must install cwd again copy cotest of backup folder and restore?What this chieftec 450w backup?complate rom,os,settings?Example if i have another rom can i with this metod restore to this rom what i backuo it?

a nandroid back up takes an exact image of the whole phone. system, data, apps, contacts, everything. its then placed in the clockworkmod folder on the sd card.
when you restore the backup it will bring the phone back to the exact state it was in when you did the back up.
and as far as i know you cant just select parts of it. its all or none. also i think if you rename it it might mess up the m5d sum but dont quote me on it

I did it from boot menu.Turn on + volume down backup and restore,backup and thet is it,i just go to look where is file and save to my PC.

I use rom manager to rename the backups, and never had a problem.
Also you can extract things from nandroids, apps, data, sms settings etc with an app called app extractor, it's in the market and there's a thread on xda for it somewhere.
Sent from my HTC Wildfire using xda premium

Lol,I happened to test the naming of nandroid last night and I used es file manager to name my nandroid "test(with original date name) and it worked perfect. I need to have little reminders of which backup is which nowadays.
" once its gone,its GONE."

Me too, I currently have 5 nandroids and 4 bootable roms in my boot manager folder, so glad I bought that 16gb card!
Sent from my HTC Wildfire using xda premium

ive got 8gb and still got 6.5 free. Mmmmm bit of a memory junkie i think.

I have about 4gb left lol, 6gb music and another 6gb of roms, backups, themes, apps, icons, mods etc etc
Sent from my HTC Wildfire using xda premium

Megasp said:
Finaly i get everything to work!Now i want to do backup to whole system and how to do thet?and where is save location thet file.I want to save that file on my pc.What is procedure?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Use Titanium Backup When u are done with the backup all files are located in A folder in your system. Than just copy that folder to your computer and your done