Database Users

Just curious...

Is it possible to have multiple NANDROID backups at once? The only thing I can see that would resemble this is via ROM Manager, where it let's you do multiple backups but I'm not sure if these are NANDROID backups.
It would be cool to have all ROMs installed and as backups, so that it's easier to go from one to another while testing and deciding on which one to use as your daily driver.

I have three different nandroid backups on my SD card currently.

HondaCop said:
Is it possible to have multiple NANDROID backups at once? The only thing I can see that would resemble this is via ROM Manager, where it let's you do multiple backups but I'm not sure if these are NANDROID backups.
It would be cool to have all ROMs installed and as backups, so that it's easier to go from one to another while testing and deciding on which one to use as your daily driver.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can have multiple backups in amon ra or clockword. Clockwork/Rom Manager let you rename backups.

chazglenn3 said:
I have three different nandroid backups on my SD card currently.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sweet! So you did them straight from Recovery or via ROM Manager?

Yes, that's the beauty of it. Just wipe and restore to any setup you have backed up. However many you want, however different.
Sent from my PC36100 using Tapatalk

adelaney said:
Yes, that's the beauty of it. Just wipe and restore to any setup you have backed up. However many you want, however different.
Sent from my PC36100 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
donatom3 said:
You can have multiple backups in amon ra or clockword. Clockwork/Rom Manager let you rename backups.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Man, how have I lived without doing this! hahahah I guess because I've been living on CM6 ever since the first nightly was released. But I am going to give it a shot too. Thanks.

HondaCop said:
Is it possible to have multiple NANDROID backups at once? The only thing I can see that would resemble this is via ROM Manager, where it let's you do multiple backups but I'm not sure if these are NANDROID backups.
It would be cool to have all ROMs installed and as backups, so that it's easier to go from one to another while testing and deciding on which one to use as your daily driver.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes.
Open up your nand backup file, usually named "nandroid" you will find the last 5 or so backup with date and time used to name the files. The Recovery program may have a limit on how many it keeps at once (i.e. last 5...) However if you're trying to back up specific ROM's you may want to copy and paste these to another area of the SD Card so that they are not overwritten in subsequent backups. You can then move them back (in the event that they are overwritten) to the nandroid folder to restore.
-kp

You can use nandroid to make as many backups as you want as long as you have room on your SD card. It is also safe to rename by mounting your SD card and going to the nandroid folder and renaming each one.

HondaCop said:
Man, how have I lived without doing this! hahahah I guess because I've been living on CM6 ever since the first nightly was released. But I am going to give it a shot too. Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Right now I have a Sprint 1.47 rom with root access, a DC 3.2.3 rom and the latest CM6 nightly all as Nandroid backups. Once the official Froyo update comes out and is given root access by someone here I will replace the Sprint 1.47 with that and have those three backups.

Captainkrtek said:
You can use nandroid to make as many backups as you want as long as you have room on your SD card. It is also safe to rename by mounting your SD card and going to the nandroid folder and renaming each one.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I use Amon's recovery and I renamed 4 of my backups a few days ago. They won't restore now, I'm getting the "run from mobile-sh" error

Formatting the SD card

I just recently got the MyTouch4G, got it permrooted and did a full back up of my sd card to my pc, but it's still on stock rom. I want to flash cyanogen7 but there's a lot of junk on the sd card first
My question is if it is okay to do a full format and if so, any advice on important folders or files I should copy back after the format, apart from the clockwork folder (i know that one is important)
Thanks for any help...
Sent from my HTC Glacier using XDA App

Well do as I do just create a dir called Files and inside it make sub dir's and put all stuff you want in it like aduio, video, photo, ect. Also dont worry about the other folders in your root /sdcard. Far as format goes as you backed it up to your PC just format sdcard and if you missed something it will rebuild itself. Make sure you backed up video/photo whatever if you took any. Usually once you install something that requires you to place elements in the root of your sdcard after its complete always remove it this way you save yourself a lot of headaches later on. I always keep my dir nice and clean old habit of *nix world

STHNS said:
Well do as I do just create a dir called Files and inside it make sub dir's and put all stuff you want in it like aduio, video, photo, ect. Also dont worry about the other folders in your root /sdcard. Far as format goes as you backed it up to your PC just format sdcard and if you missed something it will rebuild itself. Make sure you backed up video/photo whatever if you took any. Usually once you install something that requires you to place elements in the root of your sdcard after its complete always remove it this way you save yourself a lot of headaches later on. I always keep my dir nice and clean old habit of *nix world
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for your response. Just curious but clockwork recovery on Vibrant saves itself as update.zip (if I remember correctly) on the root of the internal sd card. Where does it save recovery on MT4G? I didn't see an update.zip file after flashing recovery. Thanks again for your response
Sent from my HTC Glacier using XDA App

Its saved under /sdcard/clockworkmod/backup you will see the dir with timestamp. Normally I don't waste time backing up as I know what I am doing but if you do want it then go ahead and just mv the dir to your PC temporarily then sync back to sdcard once you are done.
Whatever data is saved even the cache on SD I know so if I find data that is valuable I still mv it to /sdcard/files and redirect that path. This way I have clean data scheme as you don't want 9000 bs on your root directory.

Thanks again for replying. I know where the nandroid backups are stored but what I was wondering about is the actual clockwork recovery that you boot into in order to flash roms, make backups, etc. On Samsung Vibrant, when you go into rom manager and flash recovery, it creates a zip file on the root of your internal sd. When you do this with MT4G, it puts that recovery flash somewhere.
Sent from my HTC Glacier using XDA App

m00nshake said:
Thanks again for replying. I know where the nandroid backups are stored but what I was wondering about is the actual clockwork recovery that you boot into in order to flash roms, make backups, etc. On Samsung Vibrant, when you go into rom manager and flash recovery, it creates a zip file on the root of your internal sd. When you do this with MT4G, it puts that recovery flash somewhere.
Sent from my HTC Glacier using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think CM comes with clockwork rom manager preinstalled. Your recovery won't change when you flash a rom. There's no need to back up recoveries because they're available in rom manager. If you need cw 3.0.0.5 just download the flashable version from the cm7 forum and save it.
Swyped on my rooted MyTouch4G

Since the mytouch 4g installs some of the apps on the microSD card, does a nandroid backup include those in the system image? Or should I use something like titanium backup for those?

pstu said:
Since the mytouch 4g installs some of the apps on the microSD card, does a nandroid backup include those in the system image? Or should I use something like titanium backup for those?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nandroid will back everything in the system including apps but some data is stored on the sd card as well. My advice is to a nandroid and backup your entire sd card to your pc as well
Sent from my HTC Glacier using Tapatalk

XfooYen said:
I think CM comes with clockwork rom manager preinstalled. Your recovery won't change when you flash a rom. There's no need to back up recoveries because they're available in rom manager. If you need cw 3.0.0.5 just download the flashable version from the cm7 forum and save it.
Swyped on my rooted MyTouch4G
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is not really in reference to cyanogenmod but any rooted MT4G. When you root your phone you download and install clockwork. From rom manager, you choose ' flash recovery'. You choose your phone from the list and it flashes the recovery image somewhere on your phone. My question was to find out what directory does it flash recovery to and as what the file is called.
I am currently running gorillasens final but this would be the same as any rom here, possibly the exception being cyanogenmod
Sent from my HTC Glacier using Tapatalk

m00nshake said:
Nandroid will back everything in the system including apps but some data is stored on the sd card as well. My advice is to a nandroid and backup your entire sd card to your pc as well
Sent from my HTC Glacier using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I understand that, my question was whether or not a nandroid backup includes the app data stored on the sd card?

pstu said:
I understand that, my question was whether or not a nandroid backup includes the app data stored on the sd card?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No it does not have data stored on sd card
Sent from my HTC Glacier using Tapatalk

What is list files/folders that came stock on the MT4G micro-SD card?
Thanks

running out of space

I have flashed many Roms, but lately I am running out of room on my internal storage. I wipe everything 3 times and storage says I have only 4 GB left. What am I doing wrong? I recently install JB and a game I ha enter played in a while. I opened the game and it wanted to continue play from 8 weeks ago. Any help would be great.

romagnus said:
I have flashed many Roms, but lately I am running out of room on my internal storage. I wipe everything 3 times and storage says I have only 4 GB left. What am I doing wrong? I recently install JB and a game I ha enter played in a while. I opened the game and it wanted to continue play from 8 weeks ago. Any help would be great.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It could be your internal storage is just filled with game data and other files that don't normally get deleted when doing Rom wipes.
If you "really" want to clean your system of off the old stuff, then when you boot into your CWM Recovery, select "Backup and Restore". Then select "Toggle Data Media".
When you do your wipes and formats, it will "REALLY" wipe all your data from your tab. Fotos, Game data, downloaded files, etc.
Then install your rom.
MD

Moscow Desire said:
It could be your internal storage is just filled with game data and other files that don't normally get deleted when doing Rom wipes.
If you "really" want to clean your system of off the old stuff, then when you boot into your CWM Recovery, select "Backup and Restore". Then select "Toggle Data Media".
When you do your wipes and formats, it will "REALLY" wipe all your data from your tab. Fotos, Game data, downloaded files, etc.
Then install your rom.
MD
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
thanks for your reply. it would appear that I have no option for "toggle data media " on my device in the section you designated. I will keep looking.

How many nanoid backup do you have? Each time you do a backup from cwm it creates a huge file , 400+ mb. Delete some of them with a file manager like ROM manager or ES file explorer.
Sent from my A500 using xda premium

dadecamp said:
How many nanoid backup do you have? Each time you do a backup from cwm it creates a huge file , 400+ mb. Delete some of them with a file manager like ROM manager or ES file explorer.
Sent from my A500 using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have one backup. I moved everything in titanium backup to my external storage and deleted the one backup. I went from 4GB to 7GB.

romagnus said:
I have one backup. I moved everything in titanium backup to my external storage and deleted the one backup. I went from 4GB to 7GB.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As always, there is more information than what was told....
As with CWM, you have to be running the newer versions. Next time, might want to give a little more info. TB will by default, for those that still use it, save all data to internal SD.
MD

Moscow Desire said:
As always, there is more information than what was told....
As with CWM, you have to be running the newer versions. Next time, might want to give a little more info. TB will by default, for those that still use it, save all data to internal SD.
MD
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yea, the last time i used TB according to the back up was almost a year ago. I always deleted it when it came with a new rom. I had no idea the file was still on my storage much less a backed up rom. but thanks for the assist anyways.

In TB you can always choose to set ext sd as target for backup. Well thats what i do. Knowing me I'm probably wrong lol

Remove TWRP?

I used GooManager to install TWRP on my phone. I'm still stock and rooted. I noticed that TWRP was using over 4GB's of storage on my phone. Is there a way I can remove it without starting having to reinstall everything on the phone?

AnaMayShun said:
I used GooManager to install TWRP on my phone. I'm still stock and rooted. I noticed that TWRP was using over 4GB's of storage on my phone. Is there a way I can remove it without starting having to reinstall everything on the phone?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just pull down the stock recovery in a .zip form (search these forums) for your firmware and flash it with TWRP.
But I'd guess the reason it has a big footprint is that you did a nandroid backup, right? If so, you can move that backup off your phone to a PC, etc and free up the space. That way you'd still have it if you needed it. Or just get a bigger SD card and don't worry about it. I have a 32gb card and am happy to have a nandroid backup there, in case I need it.

jejb said:
Just pull down the stock recovery in a .zip form (search these forums) for your firmware and flash it with TWRP.
But I'd guess the reason it has a big footprint is that you did a nandroid backup, right? If so, you can move that backup off your phone to a PC, etc and free up the space. That way you'd still have it if you needed it. Or just get a bigger SD card and don't worry about it. I have a 32gb card and am happy to have a nandroid backup there, in case I need it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So I can move the nandroid file to my SD card? The TWRP is taking space on my phone and now i'm under 1GB of free space and I try to save things on my SD card.

I got it transferred. I didn't see the option to back up to my SD Card before. Thanks for all your help.

Cool, glad you got it figured out.

[Q] Help a (desperate) newbie (how to back-up rom)

Hello all,
Firstly, please bear with me if my question seems simple... I have flashed a couple of roms without problems, have recovered a bricked mobile and have generally messed around without too many disasters - unless you count the many hours spent setting-up my mobile after re-flashing... and this is the point... I will give a background and then questions will follow...
background:
I have finally found the rom for me (Albe 95 v2 btw - highly recommended, the guy did a truly grand job) and since I reckon that sooner or later I will become "restless" again and want to re-flash or mess around, I would like to make a back-up of my complete system... not app-by-app but do the backup in such a way that I get a single .zip file at the end of it all, and no matter how badly I might mess things up further down the road I can always return to my current status with in a flash (sorry for the poor pun)...
should be easy, right? well I've tried following some simple steps with clockwork mod (basically trying some of the functions in the backup directory, where there is an option that says something that amounts to "make a zip") and just now for the second time I've had a failure... after seemingly working and copying files for some 5-10 minutes it suddenly stops, says there was an error, and that's it... time to exit cwm and reboot... and that's when the real problems begin...
upon exiting CWM, i get a weird message (something about maybe losing root, and having to fix it before exiting)... after exiting (I selected the option to "fix it" btw) upon reboot the mobile works fine (rooted and all) except one detail - the sim card doesn't receive signal anymore... this happened just the same way first time round and I want to know what I´m doing wrong.. I did read some guides about making a backup and they seem easy enough when I read them, but then this happens...
so question #1 - can somebody point me to a newbie-friendly, step-by-step, idiot-proof guide for how to reach my holy grail in the form of a zip file?
...all this brings me to question #2:
after installing the new rom, there is some 3Gb left of memory... after a day or so of using, theres about 700mb left... I formatted the SD card and wanted clockworkmod to backup directly onto the sd_card... is there an option for this? there is simply no way I will ever be able to free up space on the internal memory alone...
question #3 - where does all that space disappear??? and speaking of space disappearing, after clockworkmod did its partial backup, the internal storage was reduced from some 700mb to under 300... now even if the phone is strictly speaking working, I cannot so much as update an application, or download a new one... unfortunately this is where my ignorance shows, as I understand that the internal storage is split in two sections, but I have no idea how (if?) I can access the "main" one, where CWM is presumably writing its files and which I guess by now is chock-full... what can I do here? where does CWM hide its backups (and yes, I´ve searched around and read somewhere that its supposed to be in a directory such as Data/Media/clockworckmod, but I cannot find it... and I can see the hidden files...
in fact, out of 9Gb of internal storage, the directories & fiels I can see amount to a pitiful 1,3Gb, and yet if I check space available in system settings I get 300 Gb!!! that means I have a good 7,4 Gb of storage unaccounted for! that's not even considering that total space of internal card is 9gb, not the 16gb that it should be... in other words, I can account for almost exactly 10% of my internal storage... what the hell????? either my internal memory is made of dark matter or I need a charitable colleague on this board to explain to me what is going on... or maybe suggest a link that you learned from back in the day when you were a newbie...
that's it... for now... sorry for the extremely long post, but I am frustrated, as I have to flash this bugger, again...
Thank you in advance for any help, info, and advice...
P.

1. Not in a zip file. The backup feature in ClockworkMod and all other custom recoveries is what we call a nandroid backup. They generally are backed up and restored using the appropriate functions, and not via a flashable zip file.
2. On the Galaxy S4, the internal storage is labeled "sdcard0". Thus ClockworkMod apparently thinks it's a MicroSD card. Looking at another device running a current version of CWM, it doesn't appear that you can select the location. If you want to be sure the backup is made on the MicroSD card, change your recovery to TWRP 2.8.4.0. You can select where the backup goes on that recovery.
3. You likely made multiple backups with ClockworkMod. An odd thing, at least the the copy of ClockworkMod on my tablet, is that if you delete backups, the space itself is still allocated to the backups that no longer exist. To free up this space, in the backup and restore menu is an option to "free unused backup data". Horribly misnamed, if you select this option you should see your space return. In addition, keep in mind that Android stores hidden files and folders on the internal storage. If you download large games, you may find yourself running out of space as the game stores parts of itself on the internal storage in a hidden directory.
Once you get your space back, switch your recovery to TWRP so you can select the MicroSD card.

Thanks for your answer strephon.... but now i need to understand the next steps and to avoid a re-re-reinstall, i would like to ask what version of TWRP should i use?
I have Rashr to help me get this recovery app but i have a list of options to choos from and none seems correct...
if i run Phone Info, it tells me the following:
- device type: jflte
- Product name: kltexx
...but on rashr none of the TWRP versions seem applicable... the closest would be jfltexx (ver 2.8.5.0 )... there is also a ver 2.8.4.0 but also in this case only for jfltexx... is this what i'm after?
Please note that CWM and Philz both have jflte versions... maybe i should try Philz? Does it let me do nandroid backup on my Sd card?
Again, thanks in advance

You probably will have better luck using the TWRP Manager app, but the version you want is 2.8.4.0, for jfltexx. Philz is a derivative of ClockworkMod, but I don't know if it has the same limitations.

Thank you man... got twrp and ran the backup. Looks like just what i was after...
Much obliged ?

...now that i've managed to get the backup done i would like to make sure about one point :
This will work if i mess install a new rom and for whatever reason i want to revert to my backed up rom... but what if i brick my mobile?
Thats happened to me before and i downloaded a rom which I flashed using Odin and with the phone in download mode... is there a way i can merge these files in a zip (or whatever format )that i can then flash with Odin?

If you brick and need Odin, you won't be able to use these files in it. However, if you have to install a ROM via Odin, you can afterward install the recovery and restore from the nandroid backup. The backup would then restore the S4 back to the state it was in when the backup was made.

...but is there no way of doing that in one step only? I mean just as someone prepared that rom to be flashed via odin can i not create one myself? There's gotta be a way. ...

platypus78 said:
...but is there no way of doing that in one step only? I mean just as someone prepared that rom to be flashed via odin can i not create one myself? There's gotta be a way. ...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What you want is not possible.
You won't brick your phone, it's almost impossible.
If a situation like you describe emerges, then just flash a custom recovery trough Odin and restore the backup.

Damn that sucks ?
But at least its cleared so thanks for that...