Backup Confusion - Nexus 7 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

I have backed up my N7 two different ways, and am a little confused as to the differences in size, and *what* exactly is backed up. The first method I tried, because my N7 is encrypted, was the ADB backup method. Using the following:
adb backup -f C:\XXXXXX.ab -apk -shared -all -system (which is every option), get's me a backup of about 2.2 Gigs. I have 1.5 Gigs of Co-pilot maps, and about 600 Megs of video, in addition to apps and the system.
When I do a TWRP backup (now that it supports encryption), using *all* the options (3 are checked by default, and I add the rest like Cache, Boot, etc...) I get a backup of about 1 Gig.
Coming from the Windows world and having one image that includes the entire computer system, I want the same thing for the N7: Disaster occurs and I just recover 1 image and have everything back the way it was. Why the size difference between the two? Which one is more complete? Best for a disaster/replacement after loss/theft?
Thanks!
RF

Twrp and cwm compress their backups. Which is more secure? Well if they're both on the disk and it's encrypted I would think both, I'm not sure if encrypted backups are supported.
Sent from my paranoid Nexus 7.

redmonke255 said:
Twrp and cwm compress their backups. Which is more secure? Well if they're both on the disk and it's encrypted I would think both, I'm not sure if encrypted backups are supported.
Sent from my paranoid Nexus 7.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In case its helpful, the new TWRP version has some new features for doing encrypted backups.
Sent from my Nexus 7 using xda premium

Thanks for the replies. I'm not worried about the security (the ADB backup is encrypted by default. and the TWRP backup is stored in a TrueCrypt container). I was more concerned with the size difference. It looks like the TWRP backup might not include the GPS maps or my videos? I'm just looking for confirmation that I can restore *everything* in case of disaster, and which one would do that. It looks like ADB may be more complete...but I don't know.
RF

Related

How to backup with nandroid if there is not enough space?

Hello,
I wonder if anyone know... What happens when let's say i have 9gb of data on my s2 and i want to backup it with nandroid? It should be possible to do this to sd card, but what if some apps are on phone and some on sd card? How backup then?
If i upgrade to a newer custom built rom, i them try to backup, wouldn't it restore the older backed up firmware? Or just apps and settings, but not rom itself?
Thank you,
Tomas
no one? did no one fill their phone and tried to backup? maybe there is a solution to backup to a computer?
execine said:
Hello,
I wonder if anyone know... What happens when let's say i have 9gb of data on my s2 and i want to backup it with nandroid? It should be possible to do this to sd card, but what if some apps are on phone and some on sd card? How backup then?
If i upgrade to a newer custom built rom, i them try to backup, wouldn't it restore the older backed up firmware? Or just apps and settings, but not rom itself?
Thank you,
Tomas
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nandroid backups are an image of
/system
/data
/dbdata
(on CF-Root, not sure about original CWM) it also includes .android_secure, which is SD-stored apps.
I don't understand what you are asking.
If there is not enough space you obviously have to delete something.
BTW: data-partition is around 2,1GB and system-partition 500MB, so there is no way a single backup can use 9GB
Maybe I am not being very clear, sorry about that
Coming from an Iphone, i am looking for a total phone backup solution. Itunes backs up literally everything - your apps, music, photos etc. It's filled probably with 20gb of different data.
Question is if I have my phone filled with games, different apps which make let's say 10 gb (not that much counting in that one game may be up to 1 gb), so how do i backup this? To SD card?
What if I have 20gb of data , 10 of which are on phone, 10 on sd card, in this case i wouldn't be able to backup everything?
One more technical question about rom upgrades. Currently i installed Villain Rom and have a backup made with nandroid. When i upgrade to a newer Villain Rom 1.5 or whatever comes out and I do the restore, i suppose it will restore 1.4 rom version with it's all apps and settings?
In this case, how do i backup only accounts, contacts, sms , apps, photogallery but not rom itself?
Sorry for all those questions, but i'm reading the forum all over, and there's still hundreds of questions i'm looking to find answers, so that i could comfortably migrate from iphone to galaxy..
execine said:
Maybe I am not being very clear, sorry about that
Coming from an Iphone, i am looking for a total phone backup solution. Itunes backs up literally everything - your apps, music, photos etc. It's filled probably with 20gb of different data.
Question is if I have my phone filled with games, different apps which make let's say 10 gb (not that much counting in that one game may be up to 1 gb), so how do i backup this? To SD card?
What if I have 20gb of data , 10 of which are on phone, 10 on sd card, in this case i wouldn't be able to backup everything?
One more technical question about rom upgrades. Currently i installed Villain Rom and have a backup made with nandroid. When i upgrade to a newer Villain Rom 1.5 or whatever comes out and I do the restore, i suppose it will restore 1.4 rom version with it's all apps and settings?
In this case, how do i backup only accounts, contacts, sms , apps, photogallery but not rom itself?
Sorry for all those questions, but i'm reading the forum all over, and there's still hundreds of questions i'm looking to find answers, so that i could comfortably migrate from iphone to galaxy..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Regarding restoring only apps/accounts/etc but not the rom iteself, within cwm, in backup and restore, chhoose advanced restore and the restore data.
Im not certain whether it restores gallery or sms.i sync my photos via dropbox, and backup my texts seperately.
Sent from my GT-P1000 using XDA Premium App
So there is no unified backup solution for android? You would have to back up everything separately ?
execine said:
So there is no unified backup solution for android? You would have to back up everything separately ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's fairly simple:
Nandroid for your ROM and user data that is on the PHONE and /data partition
For the /sdcard and /sdcard/external_sd, that's up to you to sort out... Perhaps back up the contents by connecting to your PC? Then copy the contents of the SD? That way you have your nandroid backup stored on the computer just in case
so then in case something goes wrong, i restore with nandroid and manually copy contents from PC and ALL of my phone's data (software, contacts, gallery etc) will be there?
execine said:
Coming from an Iphone, i am looking for a total phone backup solution. Itunes backs up literally everything - your apps, music, photos etc. It's filled probably with 20gb of different data.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, now you have a phone that doesn´t hide everything from the user it shouldn´t be that hard to make a backup.
There are basically 4 interesting partitions on the phone:
system (about 500MB) - This holds more or less the whole Firmware. While it is technically just a partition on the flash-memory, it is used like a ROM in normal usage, so the only situation where something will be written on this partition is a firmware-upgrade.
data (about 2GB)- This partition holds all user-installed apps and their settings.
sdcard (about 12GB) - This is not really a sdcard. Instead it is a part of the internal memory, you can use it for example for media, documents, images etc., whatever you like. This partition can be accessed on your computer as a regular USB-storage, and you can do a backup of it the way you like, either simply copying everything, or using a backup-solution of your choice.
external_sd (optional) - This is the micro-sd-card you can put in your phone. Obviously you can use it for anything you like. This partition is also accessible as a USB-storage or you can use a simple USB card-reader to access it on your computer.
Usually all your applications and settings will be stored in the /data/-partition.
If you choose the Move-to-SD option in the application-manager, some parts of the application will be moved to the (internal) /sdcard/-partition, but all the user-data/settings still remain on the /data/-partition.
So the maximum space you need to backup all your settings and apps is under 3GB.
Now to the possibilities of a backup, and the importance of the different things.
A nandroid-backup will basically make an image of the /system/ and /data/ partitions (also a bit more, but that´s not really important).
Usually it will use the /sdcard/-partition, which actually is still in your phone.
If you restore a Nandroid-Backup your System will be in the exact state before the backup, including all applications with their settings (which also means contacts, e-mails, sms etc).
Obviously everything that has changed after the backup will be lost.
A restore well also restore the complete firmware from the backup.
A backup from Nandroid can only be restored on the same phone, with the same partitions.
The second possibility to make backups would be TitaniumBackup.
This program will store all your installed applications and their data.
Default it will store it on the internal /sdcard/, but it is probably more useful to change the path to the external_sd.
Everything in Android is an application, so this will also save all your settings.
During a restore TitaniumBackup simply reinstalls your applications and then restores their settings.
TitaniumBackup can restore your applications with any Firmware, and in theory even on other phones (it may not work with special System-apps but it surely works with most "user-apps")
So Clockworkmod is great if you want to play around with different firmwares, especially Custom ROMs.
You can install different ROMs, make a backup and very easy and fast switch between them.
For a "regular" backup TitaniumBackup is maybe the better choice, it can backup all your settings and applications and for example if a Firmware-update goes wrong simply restore anything.
There is no real need to backup the /system/-partition anyway, you can simply download the Firmware and flash it, there is no user-data on this partition.
sdcard and external_sd usually only contains media, which you probably have somewhere on your PC anyway, so there is no real need for a backup, maybe for the pictures and videos you make with your phone, but again you should copy this on your PC regularly anyway. And if you want you can easily copy everything on it as well.
What if I have 20gb of data , 10 of which are on phone, 10 on sd card, in this case i wouldn't be able to backup everything?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Question is if I have my phone filled with games, different apps which make let's say 10 gb (not that much counting in that one game may be up to 1 gb), so how do i backup this? To SD card?[/quote]
Apps can´t be several GB in size on Android. Normally you have only around 2GB for Apps, if you use the App2SD-feature it can be expanded a bit.
If applications need a lot of data, for example like navigation-programs or games, they will download this on the first start and store this on the /sdcard/-partition.
As I said, you can access this easily like a removable drive and copy everything you like.
It isn´t also that important to make a backup of this, as it can be downloaded again anytime, and if something goes wrong it usually will mess up your system and don´t influence the data-partition anyway (well as long as you don´t repartition the whole memory)
Thank you, that does explain a lot!
I connected my S2, but i can't see to find any installed apps browsing through USB, or i shouldn't be seeing that?
Tomas
execine said:
Thank you, that does explain a lot!
I connected my S2, but i can't see to find any installed apps browsing through USB, or i shouldn't be seeing that?
Tomas
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, they are stored in /data
You back that up using nandroid, then you restore it via nandroid and they will be there. What you see on your PC via USB is the "internal SD".
Understood, thank you. Things getting more clear after a week of reading and using the phone ))
Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk
execine said:
I connected my S2, but i can't see to find any installed apps browsing through USB, or i shouldn't be seeing that?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, you see the (internal) /sdcard/ partition and (if present) the /external_sd/ (the MicroSD-card you have in your phone)
To simply backup your applications, the easiest way is TitaniumBackup.
This will store the .apk and settings for each up in a folder of your choice (on /sdcard/ or /external_sd/, as you usually have no direct access to the other partitions)
You can copy this folder on your PC, or even in the TitaniumBackup-folder of another phone and use it there.
There are several advantages using TitaniumBackup to save your Apps over CWM-recovery. You can use it with the enabled phone for example, and also just restore individual Apps, if you like.

nandroid backup question

Since the nandroid backup is almost 2 gigs and i bought the 8gig(5.9 gig free)........that leaves me 3 gigs free. Is there anyway to move my nandroid backup to my cpu or a flash drive off of stickmount and be able to access it there with cwm thus leaving more internal storage? I am rooted
Two gigs for this thing? Nandroid on my phone is less than 500mb. Might want to confirm someone's size for this device.
Sent from my Nexus 7 using xda app-developers app
cpu?? I'm pretty sure that came out wrong...
But yes, you can put the backup on an external drive. All you have to do is copy the clockwordmod/backup folder onto wherever you want to store it whether it be on a flash drive, your computer etc. However note that if your device ever screws up e.g. not booting properly and your USB port is malfunctioning or broken (rare but on the off chance), you'll have a very bad time trying to make it work again without a nandroid on the device.
The new version of CWM (6.0.0.6) has changed radically, & copying the backup directory to an external device WILL NOT be a complete nandroid backup.
With 6.0.0.6 Koush introduced file deduplication into CWM to dramatically reduce the disk usage of multiple nandroid backups. Take a look at the Google+ post for more details.

CWM making backups that are very small (@15mb)?

Using the newest CWM recovery touch, I'm trying to make a backup before jumping to AOKP (hooray!) But.... My backups are tiny; about 15mb. I'm not sure how big they should be (the one I made immediately after rooting was 880mb) but I'm certain this is too small. Anyone have any idea what I'm doing wrong? Thanks in advance.
If you've used an older version of CWM, I'm sure you're used to ~1GB backups. In 6.0 and above, backups are handled differently. A good portion of backups are put into these "blob" files and then a smaller backup is made for each specific backup. The theory is that if you have multiple backups, they can pull data from the blob files instead of duplicating things that haven't changed. Whatever you do, DO NOT delete these blob files, doing so will corrupt your backup.
meijin3 said:
If you've used an older version of CWM, I'm sure you're used to ~1GB backups. In 6.0 and above, backups are handled differently. A good portion of backups are put into these "blob" files and then a smaller backup is made for each specific backup. The theory is that if you have multiple backups, they can pull data from the blob files instead of duplicating things that haven't changed. Whatever you do, DO NOT delete these blob files, doing so will corrupt your backup.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you! I was so confused by this. So if I want to transfer my backup to my laptop HDD, I now need to copy the entire Clockworkmod folder? (and this will have all of the files necessary for a full backup?)
slack04 said:
So if I want to transfer my backup to my laptop HDD, I now need to copy the entire Clockworkmod folder? (and this will have all of the files necessary for a full backup?)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Unfortunately yes, the new blobs system means it will take a longer time to make a copy of your backup, it's horrible over Wi-Fi. I just didn't bother with it and went with TWRP instead.

Nexus 7 CWM backups are very large

Hi,
I know cwm is NOT supposed to backup the sdcard but just /system, /data and a few other small partitions.
On my nexus 7 I have hardly any data, apps plus data are under 1G but a single cwm backup (I have just one backup) takes 2.8GB.
Its as though its backing up the sdcard as well as the size of the backup seems to be about right for an entire backup including the sdcard.
I wonder if the fact /data and /sdcard are actually accessing the same real storage (/sdcard sits on internal storage) is confusing cwm.
Has anyone else noticed this.
If its not the case then why is the backup so large.
BTW I know im not doing anything stupid like miscalculating the amount of data and apps etc.
Sent from my Nexus 7 using xda premium
I think the problem was I still had old backup blobs from deleted cwm backups. Looks like just deleting the backup via cwm doesn't delete the blobs, I had to chose the option to free nandroid space.
However I've switched to twrp now anyway as I don't like the way cwm uses these blobs. I find it much better to have each backup completely separate and then I can copy an individual backup off the system and store elsewhere.
I also find thousands of blobs/files slows things down when using apps to manage the internal sdcard filesystem

Twrp backups too big

Hello everybody. I've been flashing custom roms for a while now and I've never had this problem. I would like to make a twrp backup of my current rom and try another one, I've done this in the past but now I'm having some trouble doing it, and I'm not sure what's wrong. On my phone I have 5.5gb free, my apps total are 2.6gb and my other media in the SD card partition are about 4gb.. Now when I try to make a backup in twrp it comes out like 6gb which really to big to keep on the phone. I always remembered that all the backups I did where around 2.8gb so I don't understand what's wrong. I would like to backup my rom with apps and settings and exclude my SD card partition since even if a rom doesn't boot and I do a clean wipe doesn't get erased... Any ideas? I'm on the latest twrp...
Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk
Perhaps you should delete your old backups and choose to compress backup
Sent from my Nexus 4 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app
TWRP doesn't support excluding things afaik, you could always make a backup of just /system with TWRP and use 'adb backup' to do your apps.
I usually use 'adb backup -all -apk -nosystem' as this works without root and will backup all user apps + data.

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