Database Develop

Nandroid: What Gets Restored?

Okay. I make regular Nandroid backups. I also brick my phone a lot since I like to play. I don't mind since I simple wipe and reload. However, last night I decided that I was going to try and put my many Nandroid backups to good use. The reason I haven't done so until now was that the process seemed too cumbersome and detailed. I always found it more straightforward, albeit more time consuming, to just reinstall my apps and change all my settings manually. It actually is surprisingly quick when you get used to it. Anyway, after quite some time, I finally managed to successfully configure and flash one of my Nandroid backups using the NNADROID Recovery GUI tool from this forum. To my surprise, it didn't seem to do much. I am not sure what was supposed to happen. I always assumed that all my settings and customizations would be there. While I didn't think my apps would (the Nandroid backup was too small to hold my files) I thought my app settings would and when I reinstalled an app it would contain all my settings. Nothing.
So my big question, after that lengthy background, is what exactly gets restored when you flash a Nandroid backup to your phone? Perhaps I am missing something. After an exhaustive search through these forums, all I've come up with was that Nandroid does a "complete restore" of your phone but no explanation of what that means. Perhaps I missed the post (for all you expert posters, I really look before I ask a question as this is my first ever question on a forum) that explains it. Perhaps one has never been written. Either way, can someone either point me in the right direction or explain what it is I am missing? I think it would benefit people who are new to the process. Personally, I am okay with my "system" however poor it may be. It works. But if there is an easier, more efficient method, I'm all ears.
Thanks.

Everything in the /system and /data I believe. YOu get back all contacts, SMS, app data..etc. IT DOES NOT backup your apps! or anything on your ext partition

I have /data/app, /data/data, /data/dalvik-cache moved to my SD card on an ext2 partition. From what you suggested, that will not be backed up. Is that correct?
I don't need apps restored. I also don't see the value in backing up contacts since this is done via sync anyway. I also use Backup for Root Users (BRU) which does a backup of my settings as well as SMS messages (I have about half a dozen apps to back up SMS messages and I don't really care that much about them). BRU backs up Alarms, Settings, Bookmarks, Shortcuts, Playlists, Data, SMS, Dictionary, Market DB, APN, Contacts/Calls and APKs. Not sure what else I need.
Also, the app data that was restored via Nandroid didn't seem to help me as the settings were not there when I reinstalled apps. It appears that Nandroid is less useful than it appears to be. With my "manual" method, I can essentially restore just about everything inside of 30 minutes, including apps (I use ADB to bulk install). So I am not exactly sure how I would benefit from Nandroid. There has to be something more that I am missing since the forum speaks of Nandroid like the Holy Grail.

It's just way more efficient. A click of two buttons and you have a stable ready to go backup of your entire phone minus anything on your ext partition. So you can easily switch between lets say..cyanogen and thedude's builds without having to wipe and flash or just plain flash.

While that sounds amazing, I am not sure what use it is without my ext partition. All my apps are on the partition and the Nandroid restore doesn't read them. I am assuming without the apps on SD it would be a very good thing. But it seems kind of useless otherwise. I don't want to drive everyone crazy especially since I am find with how I restore. I am just very interested in fully understanding the reasoning which doesn't seem to be coming through in your explanation. My Nandroid restore, which went smoothly, was completely useless to me.

Most people love the idea of an instant restore without hassle. It's useful you'll realize that sooner or later.
(Off topic: Fellow Brooklyner, *high five*) lol

Go Brooklyn. Damn straight.
I would LOVE to realize its usefulness. It takes two second to do a backup and about a minute to restore it. PLEASE explain what makes it so good. Someone needs to write up a detailed explanation of what it does and what gets restored. After my restore I basically has to redo all my settings anyway since the apps are on the SD. Not seeing it. I guess I'll just have to play some more to figure it out. I will have to wait until I brick my phone again (which should happen soon enough, LOL) to find out.

aaronratner said:
Go Brooklyn. Damn straight.
I would LOVE to realize its usefulness. It takes two second to do a backup and about a minute to restore it. PLEASE explain what makes it so good. Someone needs to write up a detailed explanation of what it does and what gets restored. After my restore I basically has to redo all my settings anyway since the apps are on the SD. Not seeing it. I guess I'll just have to play some more to figure it out. I will have to wait until I brick my phone again (which should happen soon enough, LOL) to find out.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=459830&highlight=infernix You can look at that. Entire thread on nandroid. Honestly whether you think its useful or not is based on personal preference. It's possible to backup the ext partition by just doing a simple "adb pull /system/sd" and a simple "adb pull /data/data" will backup all your app data but nandroid is just more efficient. Read through the first couple of pages and last couple of pages in that thread and you'll have a better understanding of why we consider it our holy grail. Cheers

Since you say Nandroid doesn't back-up apps. but Back-up for Root users does then would the apps. that I back-up using BRU show as installed in Market/My downloads if I wipe?, or would I have to redownload them from Market...the reason why I ask this is because I paid for two apps. on my old Gmail account and was able to switch them to my new one but I'll lose them or basically have to buy them again if I wipe.

I use ASTRO to back up my apps. I don't think it shows up in the Market unless you backup Market data. I use aTrackDog to track updates to my files. When I reinstall apps, I do it via ADB or a file manager like ASTRO or Linda. I have the APKs backed up (even the paid ones, go ROOT!). The Market seems very forgetful when you wipe. I have to do another build anyway since my phone just crashed. Which brings me to an off topic question regarding apps to SD for which I will open a new thread. My phone keeps crashing and I think it's my apps to SD method.

_Kyros_ said:
Since you say Nandroid doesn't back-up apps. but Back-up for Root users does then would the apps. that I back-up using BRU show as installed in Market/My downloads if I wipe?, or would I have to redownload them from Market...the reason why I ask this is because I paid for two apps. on my old Gmail account and was able to switch them to my new one but I'll lose them or basically have to buy them again if I wipe.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The purchased apps will stay but any free apps will not, unless you backup and push your market.db back

You can backup your market.db. Backup for Root Users lets you do this

alritewhadeva said:
The purchased apps will stay but any free apps will not, unless you backup and push your market.db back
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I know the purchased apps will stay but the problem is I didn't purchase them from the Gmail account that I'm on now I purchased them from my original Gmail account so if I wipe they might still show up in Market/My downloads but I'll have to purchase them again so that's why I asked if you use BRU will they reinstalled them and show in Market/My download as installed or will I have to reinstall them myself from Market/My download if they show up?

If you install them using BRU they won't show on market under my downloads

I saw this and looked because I've wondered myself. I recently managed my first backup restoration and it took a few tries. To combat the losing apps on your ext partition I found (yes, through hours of research ... honest) the easiest solution is to use one card for one firmware and switch cards if I want to flash or use another. That way I have all the apps for that particular firmware. It isn't the ideal solution but cards are cheap enough to do it.

Like the solution, sort of
Dyonas, I like your solution. By keeping two SD cards it solves a lot of issues. However, so far I have not been given a detailed response of what exactly happens with a Nandroid backup. Let's assume that I have two identical SD cards with identical partitions and something goes wrong when I do something with the phone. If I do a Nadroid restore and put in the "stable" SD card (remember, for arguments sake, they are identical in every which way minus the last minute corruption), would that essentially restore it to like new? If I didn't have identical SD cards, what exactly would be restored (I understand apps do not get restored)?
Again, I am fine with my method of restoring but I think this would be a tremendous help for the community as a whole if someone could actually say what it is that happens with the restore. I will continue with my nightly Nandroid backups just in case I need them (which has happened once). But simply saying Nandroid is "amazing" or a "must" doesn't explain anything.
Thanks all.

aaronratner said:
Dyonas, I like your solution. By keeping two SD cards it solves a lot of issues. However, so far I have not been given a detailed response of what exactly happens with a Nandroid backup. Let's assume that I have two identical SD cards with identical partitions and something goes wrong when I do something with the phone. If I do a Nadroid restore and put in the "stable" SD card (remember, for arguments sake, they are identical in every which way minus the last minute corruption), would that essentially restore it to like new? If I didn't have identical SD cards, what exactly would be restored (I understand apps do not get restored)?
Again, I am fine with my method of restoring but I think this would be a tremendous help for the community as a whole if someone could actually say what it is that happens with the restore. I will continue with my nightly Nandroid backups just in case I need them (which has happened once). But simply saying Nandroid is "amazing" or a "must" doesn't explain anything.
Thanks all.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nandroid backups are stored onto your sdcard. They don't change anything on your phone. The backup stays there until you want to use it. When you do use it to restore it restores you're phone to the exact way it was when you did the backup. It doesn't matter where the nandroid backup is unless you are using cyanogen's 1.4 image and are recovering from the recovery menu. In that case you would have to move the nandroid folder to your other sdcard. Hope I answered your question Look in dream android development for the switchrom.sh script. Backups everything included ext partition and you can easily restore it from recovery console.

Tells the how, but not the what [SOLVED]
I fully understand how to backup and restore. But you said what everybody else use saying that it restores your phone to the way it was when you backed up the phone. But what exactly is restored is the question. Data? Cache? Apps? Settings? Etc. I know apps seen't but is the app data. The one nandroid restore that I performed did not seem to help me much in terms of my settings and app data. However, I have my methods using several programs and will continue my nightly nandroid backups until I figure it all out. Thanks. I will mark this as solved. If someone cares to write a detailed post on this they can just start a new thread.

aaronratner said:
I fully understand how to backup and restore. But you said what everybody else use saying that it restores your phone to the way it was when you backed up the phone. But what exactly is restored is the question. Data? Cache? Apps? Settings? Etc. I know apps seen't but is the app data. The one nandroid restore that I performed did not seem to help me much in terms of my settings and app data. However, I have my methods using several programs and will continue my nightly nandroid backups until I figure it all out. Thanks. I will mark this as solved. If someone cares to write a detailed post on this they can just start a new thread.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
EVERYTHING except apps. App data, everything on your /system. Everything except apps. Your app data won't restore unless the apps are already installed. It's that simple. Don't know why its so hard to understand.

[SOLVED]
Okay. That makes sense. I was wondering why my app data wasn't restored after a restore. But according to what you said the app needs to be installed first (which doesn't make too much sense). All I know is that I did a nandroid restore and it did not restore some of my settings which were definitely in the backup. It's no big deal. I will run a few restores to test for myself. I just didn't like the answer that every kept giving which was "everything" which explains nothing. But i am pretty sure I understand it now and one or two restores should give me a complete picture.

nandroid only partially backing up/ restoring

Hi all, I did a nandroid restore and it only partially restored my phone content, for example it did restore
- hotkeys
- sms
- wallpaper,
but didn't restore
- contacts
- homescreen setup
- applications (and data).
It worked perfectly well when I tried it, but last time it didn't. Here is what I did:
Installed 6.1 per ClockworkMod without Google Apps and did a nandroid backup as I was asked, booted into 6.1, rebooted, flashed Gapps tiny 201020 something, rebooted, didn't come past "tap the android to begin" (don't know why tapping didn't do anything), so I restored the backup I did prior to installing 6.1 and it restored only what I wrote above.
Any help will be greatly appreciated guys!

Unrelashade said:
but didn't restore
- contacts
- homescreen setup
- applications (and data).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
1. Contacts get restored from Google.
2. Did you use alternative launcher before (i.e ADW or LP). If so, the only way Nand would restore it, if you still have it on your phone but what you say is that it did not restore any apps which leads me to next point.
2. Did you have your apps on SD card? Did you do Nand+Ext backup or just Nand? Regular Nandroid back-up will not touch your ext partition. If you did just a Nandroid backup and wiped your ext partition - your apps are gone for good.

borodin1 said:
1. Contacts get restored from Google.
2. Did you use alternative launcher before (i.e ADW or LP). If so, the only way Nand would restore it, if you still have it on your phone but what you say is that it did not restore any apps which leads me to next point.
2. Did you have your apps on SD card? Did you do Nand+Ext backup or just Nand? Regular Nandroid back-up will not touch your ext partition. If you did just a Nandroid backup and wiped your ext partition - your apps are gone for good.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you for your answer! Yes I had 6.0 before 6.1 with ADW. Nandroid did restore one or two apps, but not all... (just found that out). Yes I had some apps on my sd card but nandroid didn't recover them, neither the others. Just the few I mentioned before, but I had more on my SD and more on my internal flash storage. And no, I had no ext partition of sd card (copied some of them via froyo apps2sd). Also, I didn't remove any of my files from my SD (except for some songs to make more free space).
It seems like Clockwork didn't warn me that I had not enough free space on my SD and the backup had not enough space... However I managed to get the data I needed with this tool from a German forum: http://www.android-hilfe.de/root-ha...6339-nandroid-backup-auslesen.html#post592908
Copy your .img to your computer, open with and choose the unyaffs.exe, works perfectly well
Now I still don't know why I wasn't able to get past the "Getting Started" Android first steps, but I'm going to flash again (this time with everything safely backed up) and see if it works this time.

Glald you figured it out. Hopefully you'll have better luck with it next time around.

[Q] Nandroid Help

Hi
I messed up my phone today trying to revert back using a nandroid backup i had.
Problem is, when i restored it, my captivate would get to the splash screen and just go on forever. I thought maybe it will take awhile but no, it keeps going and ive left it for so long.
Im running Team ICSSGS along with IcyGlitch B5.
I can get into the OS after i format everything but i wanted to get back into my phone with all my apps still there.
Any help please?
Thanks

Copy Glitch V14 B6 to your SD card, then try a fresh restore, followed by flashing B6 before you reboot.

Say, what is Nandroid
Never did Nandroids. Just backed all my apps, account and Wi-Fi settings by TiBu. Then copied /sdcard/TitaniumBackup into computer.
Does Nandroid knows the filesystem to format etc? And if apps were on SDCard - will it really restore them?

pc103, i tried that several times to no avail.
i finally installed appextractor and used that and did pretty much what i needed. not all my user data is there but thats ok, saves me from having to redownload everything.

bravomail said:
Does Nandroid knows the filesystem to format etc? And if apps were on SDCard - will it really restore them?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Good details are at What exactly is a nandroid backup?
Jay3161 said:
pc103, i tried that several times to no avail.
i finally installed appextractor and used that and did pretty much what i needed. not all my user data is there but thats ok, saves me from having to redownload everything.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Check out the smbk functions in Super Manager. They let you choose between [sys] / [user] apks +/- data when restoring. That and Super Backup makes an easier reload when Nandroid's not an option.

bravomail said:
Never did Nandroids. Just backed all my apps, account and Wi-Fi settings by TiBu. Then copied /sdcard/TitaniumBackup into computer.
Does Nandroid knows the filesystem to format etc? And if apps were on SDCard - will it really restore them?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As a longtime TIBU user I have run into trouble. I was using ROMs in the i9000 [Saurom, Continuum, Apex] family but also Native I897 ROMs [ Serenity, SaruromKK4]. Never a complaint due to TIBU. But moving over to CM9 and 4.0.4 IMM30B I have found that a full restore breaks things. Both the media player and messaging stop working [some installs]. I have had to be selective, and ...
Nandroid? pc103 links to info that shows Nandroid will not replace TIBU.. Perhaps TIBU has more control/functionality than my FULL restore approach.

I'm almost positive nandroid does recognize the file system- I think that is the point of nandroid basically, to take a snapshot of your entire phone including file systems and cache- but I ran into issues restoring apps with TiBu after a nandroid backup/restore between two rom versions, and it seemed to be due to a different format of file system. I'm no expert however...

Please use the Q&A Forum for questions &
Read the Forum Rules Ref Posting
Moving to Q&A

[Q] Restore apps to another ROM

How restore apps from current ROM to another ROM? Is there is possibility can backup specific apps and restore on another ROM.
Tq

Try titanium backup..

need reboot phone after run backup?

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1567614

Attention!!!
If you use Titanium Backup dont do a mass restore (all file at once) while it dont will put it onto SD card! the apps and the phone memory will be full and some error etc.
restor oance a time the apps. and move it manualy to SD card.

SmXtrem said:
Attention!!!
If you use Titanium Backup dont do a mass restore (all file at once) while it dont will put it onto SD card! the apps and the phone memory will be full and some error etc.
restor oance a time the apps. and move it manualy to SD card.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No its no necessary..it'l b a lengthy process so do some apps at once like 20.. no error ever occured to me..

in titanium backup setting there is a option which let you choose if you want to install apps in sdcard, phone memory or android way
choose android way then TB will install some apps in phone memory and some apps in sdcard so need to restore app individually
also TB is better than nandroid backup and never ever restore system data with TB

use titanium backup (i recommend pro version)to backup all user apps...then u flash new rom.....then u run restore missing apps with data...not anything else...

I tried yesterday to restore 30 apps from batch and fail.
Apps was backuped form stock rom.
TB dosent remember to restore the apps here it was? exemple cut the rope is sd up but puts it on phone?
I'am refering that what should be on sd to restor to sd what no no.

I use Titanium Backup Pro. Restore and run batch until notify Batch verification finished 0 error found. But not found restore files anywhere. Does I missing some step?

I always restore around 80apps at once and never had any problem..

exz8 said:
How restore apps from current ROM to another ROM? Is there is possibility can backup specific apps and restore on another ROM.
Tq
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes its possible.
Simply install titanium backup or Mybackup application from the market. The pro versions are better at a small fee
Then from the current ROM back up all the apps you want. this back up is stored in the SD card and so wount be affected by Flashing a custom ROM.
Now flash the desired ROM and again install either of the applications you used to backup the apps from the market. i.e if you used titanium backup to back up your apps, then install titanium back up from the market.
then select restore option to restore your applications!
Hope this helps.

yeah, try Titanium Backup.

Tqvm for suggestion. Then, what is different compare to CWM backup? Which better?

tha_subchief said:
Yes its possible.
Simply install titanium backup or Mybackup application from the market. The pro versions are better at a small fee
Then from the current ROM back up all the apps you want. this back up is stored in the SD card and so wount be affected by Flashing a custom ROM.
Now flash the desired ROM and again install either of the applications you used to backup the apps from the market. i.e if you used titanium backup to back up your apps, then install titanium back up from the market.
then select restore option to restore your applications!
Hope this helps.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I tried restoring when I went from Blazer ROM to CM10 but it just gave me errors and force closes. Is there a specific way in TB to restore in a different ROM or do you basically have to start off with a clean slate? 

[Q] [Important] Best Backup ?

Simple question;
What do you use as backup and restore solution ?
I want my backup software to make an image when I'm doing a backup and only recover from the image when it's restoring (so overwrite any other data that's on my phone before the restoration)

For my apps and their data I use titanium backup.
For contacts,sms, call logs, bookmarks, calendar I use Super Backup.
I use root explorer to move my pictures and music to SD card.
After that . I flash a new ROM. Works every time.
Edit:Never seen anything that actually makes an image backup expect TWRP recover
Sadly. I think you will have to use what I offered.