So now that I have a phone with an internal SD card, I am particularly worried about data, or what would happen if I can no longer take it off of a device. Previously an SD card could just be removed from a dead device, but not so now.
I'm using foldersync to mirror data, but I was wondering what were the essential folders to sync. I can figure out most of them, but I'm struggling with the Android folder in root. Is there any valuable information in here or is it all temporary and so not required to be backed up?
sshaikh said:
So now that I have a phone with an internal SD card, I am particularly worried about data, or what would happen if I can no longer take it off of a device. Previously an SD card could just be removed from a dead device, but not so now.
I'm using foldersync to mirror data, but I was wondering what were the essential folders to sync. I can figure out most of them, but I'm struggling with the Android folder in root. Is there any valuable information in here or is it all temporary and so not required to be backed up?
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if you don't care about storage space and automation and you happen to use TotalCommander for PC, it has perfect "Synchronize Dirs" feature, with in my personal experience (after many tests of different solutions) wins every time due to high customisation, ease of use and option of binary comparison
You don't need to backup the Android folder. It's mostly just full of data files for certain apps. Like Google Maps saved map data, cached music from Google Music, game data, small preferences files for some apps etc. Nothing important. Even if you delete the contents of the whole Android folder, they'll be re-created on boot or when you run those apps next. Map data, Google music etc should be downloaded again manually. It's a waste of space to back it up as it can be 2GB or more sometimes. Generally, only backup your personal data like pictures, videos, music, downloads etc. Things which you've put there yourself. Also backup any folders of backup related apps like SMSBackup&Restore, Titanium Backup and recovery folder with nandroid backups. Personal files + backup app data is all you need to backup from the SD card. Everything else is insignificant and will be recreated anyway by the respective apps.
Thanks sashank, that's what I thought. It's a pain to backup because of the size and usage.
Looking at the docs however it seems apps can put whatever data they want there, including settings. So I guess this depends on the app itself and how well it behaves itself. I guess I will have to be discerning and backup individual files in the folder depending on how important the app is to me. Which sucks.
p107r0 said:
if you don't care about storage space and automation and you happen to use TotalCommander for PC, it has perfect "Synchronize Dirs" feature, with in my personal experience (after many tests of different solutions) wins every time due to high customisation, ease of use and option of binary comparison
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Click to collapse
Well I'm using Foldersync to do this automatically already. I just didn't want to spend time and energy maintaining a backup of redundant cache data!
Related
I'm running AOKP JB Build 5, and Dagr8's Kernel.
The rom is awesome, but something is wrong with my Media Storage, ever since I ran this rom.
I am suddenly experiencing duplicates of music files, and pictures, all stored on my SD card.
I clear data on Media Storage and reboot. I then have to wait an extremely long time before my SD card finally reads, then back to normal...
But then this re-occurs!
I can't figure out why or how to permanently fix it..
Help?
Sent from my Fish Tank ₪
I have seen users with this issue, when I had double [or ghost/double files] for my pic's [no music I use pandy] it was from restore quickpic from tibu, so I just reinstalled from the Market fresh quickpic app, it fixed that, but I have to from time to time backup my storage and just do a complete format, then put my files back on, I did upgrade to a better quality ext SD and did a fresh format of that and copied my files back on, no issues since then...
A side note, I had these issues going from ICS to Jbean, but since I did the above no issues on this, just my experience.
While I can't confirm this, I do suspect that the issue is caused by duplicate media storage events occurring within the rom.
This can be accomplished a number of ways, but I also suspect that it's an APK compatibility issue.
And depending on the roms used, will manifest itself when more than 1 app stores data, while the second APK will duplicate the data save function.
Check the rom carefully for more than 1 app performing the same function, such as a camera app or music app.
These APK's often have an auto save/restore feature, but save the files under a different file name and basically duplicate the save in 2 places.
Also, apps that auto backup will often save duplicate copies in different locations, by mistake, as they are not always compatible with every build.
Again, it's really a trial and error situation, as so many variables exist, and many apps share duplicated function without registration of a force close event.
I hope in some small way this may help you find the rogue apps.....g
Background:
I had a Nexus S. Got some games and got pretty far in them. I did not root the phone. Now I have an N4. I want to pick up where I left off on the new phone with regards to the games.. let's say, They Need To Be Fed as an example.
Now, neither phone is rooted, so obviously this complicates things, but it is not impossible. I can easily use Carbon to backup my app data and restore it onto the new phone without requiring a root. However I want to explore alternative methods.
So in a perfect situation, I would like the app data (and/or the app itself) to be backed up into one nice file that can be saved onto the new phone and then opened up to put the saved data where it needs to be. I'm not sure, but do .apk's contain app data as well? Could I save my current progress on TNTBF along with the app itself into a .apk and then extract the file on my new phone to continue where I left off?
What Carbon does is create a folder specific for the app and its data, which is a bunch of files I'm not familiar with, and requires Carbon to restore the data itself. Although this app is phenomenal and will be my last resort, I'd like something that doesn't require the app itself to restore the data. I used to use something called Ultimate Backup I think. When I selected to backup an app, it would save a .apk to the sd card. I'm not sure if it was backing up just the app or the app data as well, but if it did save the app data then that would be optimal.
Is anyone familiar with anything -- app or program -- that can do something like this? Backup app data that can be restored without the app itself on unrooted devices?
From my research, it seems the answer is 'no'. But maybe something recent has come up!
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1420351 :adb backup, skip system applications.
Hey everyone. I have searched around and can't find an answer to this, so here goes;
I have a Verizon Galaxy S4 and while I love the phone and all the ROM's out for it, I HATE that due to it's limited 16GB internal memory, I am CONSTANTLY running out of space on the phone. I have moved everything I can to my SD card but still can't get it down. When I open my phone on my PC and look at the internal memory, I see a ton of folders that I don't know what the hell they are. I would love to just go through arbitrarily and delete them all but obviously that's not a great idea. Can anyone tell me and/or compile a list of files and folders that commonly end up on our phones from bloat and whatnot?
Here's a screenshot of what I see in mine, just as a for instance...
Do you have a lot of photos?
They would be in the DCIM folder
joshuabg said:
Do you have a lot of photos?
They would be in the DCIM folder
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Click to collapse
Thanks for the reply. There are a lot in there. Can I not move that folder to the SD card?
I only got the S4 last Saturday, and today UPS brought my 32G SD card. When I went to the camera app to see if there were any way to change the target location, a popup said (about), "You now have an SD card, so all single shots will now go there. Multi-shots will still go to the internal storage." There is indeed a setting for that though, Internal or SD. I plan to leave the DCIM folder on the Internal, but let it be empty
I Hate Import Cars said:
Hey everyone. I have searched around and can't find an answer to this, so here goes;
I have a Verizon Galaxy S4 and while I love the phone and all the ROM's out for it, I HATE that due to it's limited 16GB internal memory, I am CONSTANTLY running out of space on the phone. I have moved everything I can to my SD card but still can't get it down. When I open my phone on my PC and look at the internal memory, I see a ton of folders that I don't know what the hell they are. I would love to just go through arbitrarily and delete them all but obviously that's not a great idea. Can anyone tell me and/or compile a list of files and folders that commonly end up on our phones from bloat and whatnot?
Here's a screenshot of what I see in mine, just as a for instance...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You probably already know this...but here goes:
-By all means invest in an external sdcard. Use the sdcard to store all your pictures, video, music and any other documents you may be storing on your phone.
-There are two apps in the Play Store that enable you to "sort of" move apps to sdcard. Aparted will allow you to partition your sdcard. You create a partition that will be reserved for app data, cache and other "stuff". Link2SD is the app that will use that partition to "link" your apps to the data etc being stored on the sdcard partition. I saved about 1gb by using these two apps. This only works on your downloaded apps, not on system apps. Your apps will update and run as normal, but their associated data etc will be stored on the sdcard partition you create.
-Consider the type ROM you're running, if you have an option. Generally speaking, TW ROMs are more "heavy" than AOSP ROMS. You have to pick your poison. If you like and use all the unique features Samsung has put on the S4 (hand gestures, smart screen etc) then a AOSP ROM may not be what you want as your daily driver. Yes, it will use less resources in terms of RAM and internal storage, but some of those unique features that you like will not be available because most of the supporting firmware has been removed in an AOSP ROM. If you're forced to use SafeStrap to flash ROMs then your options are even fewer.
-There are a number of "safe to remove or freeze" list floating around on the web or in this forum. Like most things, one man's passion is another man's poison. Just because some guy says "xxxx.apk" is safe to remove or freeze doesn't mean it won't have an undesirable effect for you. Besides, you really don't save a lot of storage space by deleting most of those things. Unless it is truely "bloat" like NFL Football or Blockbuster I just freeze those things associated with functions or apps that I know I will never use. On a TW ROM that usually means most of the Samsung "stuff".
Hope this helps.
Remove Stuff
Removing all of the Samsung stuff that you dont use dose free up some space. Even with that I have found on the TW roms I can only hold 2 of them on my internal storage. Usually I have my Daily driver rom on there and any new roms that I want to try I just have to keep deleing those when I want to put a new one on.
What do you use to back up and restore to PC? I tried Wondershare Mobile trans but it sticks at a certain point and I have to cancel and it takes hours and I lose progress! Any info on what others are using for backup tp PC would be great!
My Phone Explorer
MyPhoneExplorer | Functions
www.fjsoft.at
There is a bit of a learning curve to set it up as you want to,but once you do get the hang of it you can back up all the usual things (contacts,calendars,photos,music,etc)
Everything on my unrooted 10+ is backed up to the SD card which I use as a data drive and store all critical data there. The SD card is backed up to the PC data drive and a seperate hdd stored remotely. Critical bookmarks are saved on Colornote which is 3X backup.
Smartswitch is used for some backup and apps like Poweramp have their own backup files.
All apks and updates are backed up with ApkExport as well; no Playstore or cloud crap needed for a full restore. I can do a full restore with no external sources needed.
After 2 forced reloads I streamlined the process... with over 349 gb of data, the data drive saves hours of uploading from the PC.
Implement a complete plan now before you need it and have triple redundancy in place.
Only two types of data users; those who have lost data and those that will.
Crashes both software/hardware caused are mostly unpredictable and can happen at any moment.
The 10+ is rock solid stable but no OS is completely impervious to poorly written apks and malware. Be prepared... or suffer.
jenmal said:
I tried Wondershare Mobile trans
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That is the only product that worked at all from that company. Well, of those I tested because of this.
File encrypted! How can I open it!! HELP!!
I see, but how come when I load up a bruteforce program (passfab for rar as an example), it doesn't detect it as an encrypted file? Like, sometimes it doesn't even show up visibly in my directory as a usable file. I get what you're saying, but...
forum.xda-developers.com
Better stay away from their software. Too heavy and bad programming in general. Also backups can be restored only if you buy the s*it...
Better just take an attitude that nothing is that important. Tons of stuff but I don't have backups at all. If it goes it goes. Before computers how people managed to live at all without them...
Have never used 3rd-party apps , free or paid. I do it via simple scripts.
Hello all,
This is my first post here. I did some searching and didn't find a direct answer to this scenario, but my apologies if I missed something.
Recently I used my PC to move files from my phone's internal storage onto a microSD card that was mounted in the device. I used the cut & paste function in Windows explorer (didn't occur to me that I could do it on the phone itself), and did this in batches. Unfortunately since that time I've discovered some of the files are corrupted--they have the appropriate size, but can't be opened. Perhaps there is a way to analyze the file structure of the JPEG to see if a byte is missing, but aside from that, I'm interested if I can run TestDisk on the internal phone storage in some way to see if the files could possibly be recovered. I found a few tutorials (example: https://roubert.name/joakim/androidfilerecovery/), but all of them require rooting, and unfortunately my phone is not rooted.
From my review of the procedures on this forum, it seems that unlocking the bootloader and/or rooting ends up requiring that the phone be wiped. Is there any way around this? And does anyone have any other suggestions on investigating whether my photos can be recovered or not?
Thanks for any help!
Lost most likely. Copy the files to the PC. There are more tools available for Windows than Android.
From now on copy/paste, verify size and readability, then delete the source files.
Check Event Viewer during the transfer time to see if errors were reported in Windows. Maybe a bad cable, port, driver issue, etc.
In the future regularly and redundantly backup critical data on at least 2 hdds that are physically and electronically isolated from each other and the PC. I keep all critical data, music, vids, docs, backups go on the SD card and use it as a data drive. Only apps, the DCIM (backed up to the SD card regularly) and download folder go on internal. Then I backup the SD card.
There can only be one folder on Android with the name dcim. So when you backup the images in the internal memory dcim folder to the SD card rename it something like Master Pics to avoid issues.
Think it through and develop a system; everything you need to do a full reload/restore should be on the SD card. Few people utilize the SD card as it should be... it shouldn't be just a random collection of files. It adds an extra layer of protection for your data. Always use a quality V30 rated card like the Sandisk Extreme.
Any chance the photos were backed up to some service online? Google Photos is free and generally present on most Android phones, Samsung has their cloud, and some carriers do as well...
In the future, like @blackhawk said, backups are FAR more important than recovery. ANYTHING important to you should be backed up ("3-2-1" is a good policy to practice). For photos, Google Photos is great because it's free (to a limit, of course) and very easy to use. I've been recommending that to everyone, even iPhone users, because recovery is harder than ever these days - SSDs and flash can fail catastrophically and without warning much more easily than the old spinny drives which usually give some warning.
Sorry there isn't much better news. You may be able to find some un-delete software and try it. There may be paid services as well, but for the most part, it's probably lost...
If you do find something that works, do let us know... always good to find out new options! Good luck.
schwinn8 said:
Any chance the photos were backed up to some service online? Google Photos is free and generally present on most Android phones, Samsung has their cloud, and some carriers do as well...
In the future, like @blackhawk said, backups are FAR more important than recovery. ANYTHING important to you should be backed up ("3-2-1" is a good policy to practice). For photos, Google Photos is great because it's free (to a limit, of course) and very easy to use. I've been recommending that to everyone, even iPhone users, because recovery is harder than ever these days - SSDs and flash can fail catastrophically and without warning much more easily than the old spinny drives which usually give some warning.
Sorry there isn't much better news. You may be able to find some un-delete software and try it. There may be paid services as well, but for the most part, it's probably lost...
If you do find something that works, do let us know... always good to find out new options! Good luck.
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Sadly, no. Didn't use a backup service online. Thanks for the advice though--I used to be pretty good about backing things up routinely, but have gotten lax. Sadly this is the consequence.
DakenSG said:
Sadly, no. Didn't use a backup service online. Thanks for the advice though--I used to be pretty good about backing things up routinely, but have gotten lax. Sadly this is the consequence.
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That's a typically error when using MTP (Media Transfer Protocol) and you shouldn't use it for transferring files whenever it's possible. MTP was developed to offer a wide range compatibility for the most storage devices but it's very buggy and very slow.
Next time you should use the internal file explorer to copy data to your SD. This is the best practice.