EDIT: OK, so for some reason, this got posted here instead of the Whatsapp section. My bad.
Hey, guys.
I broke my phone and it's getting repaired. I used it for several years and thus have hundreds of messages and media and stuff on it (since whatsapp messages are not tied to one's sim card sadly). Since Sunday I've been using a temporary phone, and I've exchanged new messages with friends on this temporary phone.
Obviously, the new phone's storage files pertaining to whatsapp only contain messages since Sunday, whereas my old phone has everything that was exchanged with friends up until the day it broke.
My old phone will be fixed soon, and I'll soon want to go back to it, but I want to keep all my chats updated, which means somehow getting the messages from this temporary phone and add them to my older phone's.
Now the question is, isn't there only room in whatsapp backup files for one single backup? Meaning, if I choose to insert my temporary phone's whatsapp data onto my older phone, won't that overwrite everything that's on the other phone?
I want to keep everything. What are my options here?
bump
Related
Quick Question regarding remote wipes and overall security of the phone's data in case of a loss/theft
Background story:
On New Year's Eve my good friend's iPhone 5S got stolen out of his pocket in a crowded club.
So I lent him my phone and we logged into iCloud using the Chrome Browser and triggered the wipe of the iPhone.
I offered him to call the credit card company and such if he had delicate data stored on the phone. But he refused...he trusts Apple's iCloud wipe routine and said he tested it at home and the phone was completely empty after that.
And he was surprisingly calm during the whole situation.
Okay he pays for insurance that covers a stolen phone, but I would have totally freaked out about my data...account logins, stored files and pictures, evernote notes, dropbox files etc.
My experience with the Android remote wipe:
Last evening I wanted to give it a try on my Android phone. So I pulled all the data that was on my phone and performed a nandroid-Backup of the system-files within TWRP and backed up my apps and data using TitaniumBackup.
And then I tried the Android Device Manager, which I had activated since it got released somewhen 2013, but never really tested more than the "localize" and "ring phone" functions.
Just yesterday I noticed the new "lock screen" function. Which is great, but I have always been using pattern locks anyway (triggered by Tasker, if my Wifi is not near). It's still nice to have and works like a charm (if the phone is connected to the internet).
So in addition I ordered my phone to get wiped. And it did what it said...it booted into Recovery and performed a factory reset / full-wipe.
But still all the data on the virtual sdcard was accessible after entering the SIM's pin code (I assume switching SIMs wouldn't change that) and setting up a new user profile. I know that it displays a warning that sdcards might not be wiped, during the process, but I thought this was referring to additional physical "microSD" storage. How wrong I was.
So all my pictures and stored files were fully accessible from the new user account.
If you store your unencrypted TitaniumBackup files on there the thief could easily restore them.
So encrypt them!
I was a bit shocked, to be honest.
And especially the fact that someone can access my phone's files without even knowing the lockscreen pattern/pin by simply booting into recovery bugs me.
Does encrypting the phone help in this situation?
Are there any drawbacks? I guess the speed and overall performance will decrease?
How can I protect the Recovery (I've got a HTC ONE, which is S-OFF'd and the bootloader unlocked via htcdev.com)?
Should I reflash the stock-recovery after flashing a CustomROM to at least make the thief require to reinstall the custom-recovery?
What other ways are there to protect the phone's data?
I don't let ADB turned on. (But this doesn't affect getting into recovery by rebooting.)
I don't keep nandroid/TitaniumBackup Backups on the phone. I pull them immediately onto a local computer after creation and delete them on the phone.
...what else?
To me booting the phone into recovery, hooking it up to any computer and using ADB to pull the sdcard's files is the most concerning security loop-hole. What am I saying...it's a shining and welcoming entrance with neon-signs all around it like a casino.
And exactly this is what taking my phone with me feels like, after the experience described above: GAMBLING...
Thanks in advance!
Every hint is very welcome
PS: If you want to try the wipe with the Android device manger yourself, be prepared that restoring the nandroid-Backup won't be possible! After a short while the phone will reboot itself and get wiped again.
The only way to restore the phone's former state was to restore the apps backups using TitaniumBackup in my case. Unfortunately some settings won't get restored, so I had to reenter all my mail accounts.
Just be prepared that it takes some time
PPS: I already posted this in the thread of the ROM I am currently using. Obviously no one didn't care over there So I thought the question might be to broad and ROM-unrelated. Hence the repost here. :angel:
No one? :angel:
I want to upgrade my non-rooted phone to a new model (specifically, from an HTC M8 to a M10), but I would like to try to transfer as much as the settings/data from my old phone as I can.
It's not rooted (though I plan to root the new one immediately) so that really limits my options.
First of all, would restoring an adb backup to the new phone be a bad idea? Obviously I wouldn't use the -system switch, but would even restoring general data and/or apks this way be a bad idea? If so, are there any better methods one can recommend to backup my app/settings data and restore it to a new phone? I don't mean just stuff like contacts or SMS.
And second, I always use a SD card to store my photos, but after it being in this phone for a few years there are a lot of deleted photos, which results in situations where I would have files like photo0012 photo0013 photo0016 with "gaps" between the file numbers. Since most camera software writes to the first available "number" my photos are going to be a scramble of new and old once I start using them on my new phone. Any good (preferably on PC) apps or recommendations on how I can rename them all in order based on the date they were taken so there won't be any "gaps"?
Should this have been posted on a specific phone's forum? It seemed like a general question to me.
Hi gang!
So, after a couple of years of happily(ish) using my S5, it's started to lag badly (even after wiping) and have started looking for a replacement.
It seems that this really is the only viable option for me, given that I really prefer having spare batteries especially when I'm traveling, and I really can't be bothered with having have to plug my phone in, even if it's to a portable back-up battery. It's also been nice to be able to just buy my own battery whenever the battery starts getting old and doesn't hold a charge as well as it did when new. :highfive:
Anyway, given that this phone doesn't have root yet, there are a few things I wanted to find out before I bite the bullet:
Folder locations: I've been using FolderMount to change the default save locations for some apps to SD card instead of internal storage. These apps do not allow you to change directories within the app, which is why I've been doing this. This has saved my ass whenever the phone itself became non-functional. Is there a way to do this without root on the G5? Or, at the very least, is there a way to manually copy these files from the device (i.e., browse ALL files on the device) to the SD card?
Folder locations (bonus round!): in particular, the data I care about is WhatsApp and Line backups. If any of you guys have specific experience being able to save these files to SD, I'd greatly appreciate any input!
Transfering messages, call log: I've been backing up and restoring SMS and Call Log using TiBu for years. While I also use SMS BackUp+ to also have an automatic fail safe, these apps don't handle group texts very well at all, ergo my reliance on TiBu. I noticed AT&T has an app called AT&T Mobile Transfer -- will this be able to transfer all of my texts/call log? Even if it's in the thousands of texts?
S Health data: Samsung has an S Health application that automatically backs up steps/heart rate data. Is there any way to transfer this data to an LG equivalent?
Those are all that I can think of right now, but any advice would be really appreciated, thanks! :good:
I'm posting this here as well because I think this is the right section.
Hey, guys.
I broke my phone and it's getting repaired. I used it for several years and thus have hundreds of messages and media and stuff on it (since whatsapp messages are not tied to one's sim card sadly). Since Sunday I've been using a temporary phone, and I've exchanged new messages with friends on this temporary phone.
Obviously, the new phone's storage files pertaining to whatsapp only contain messages since Sunday, whereas my old phone has everything that was exchanged with friends up until the day it broke.
My old phone will be fixed soon, and I'll soon want to go back to it, but I want to keep all my chats updated, which means somehow getting the messages from this temporary phone and add them to my older phone's.
Now the question is, isn't there only room in whatsapp backup files for one single backup? Meaning, if I choose to insert my temporary phone's whatsapp data onto my older phone, won't that overwrite everything that's on the other phone?
I want to keep everything. What are my options here?
Bump
Hello,
Two weeks I bought a new phone, a Samsung S23 Ultra. I transferred all data from my old phone, a S21, to my new phone. All went well according to the Samsung transfer tool, so I didn't look any further.
However, last week I noticed that I couldn't view any of the images that I sent with Whatsapp. When I click a greyed out image in a Whatsapp conversiation, it gives this error: "media file does not exist on internal storage whatsapp sent images". So I looked into that folder and there wasn't any old image there, only a few that I sent over the last few days.
At first I thought something must have gone wrong with the transfer from my old phone to my new phone, so I unstalled Whatsapp, reinstalled it and let Whatsapp do a restore from Google Drive instead. This didn't work either, it produced the same result, no sent images.
I think someting went wrong with the data transfer my old phone to my new phone, and because I noticed it only a few days later, Whatsapp made a new backup to Google Drive with an (almost) empty 'sent' folder, overwriting all existing sent images. I don't have my old phone anymore because I sold it. So I can't recover these images from my old phone, but now I lost years worth of images in all my Whatsapp conversations.
Does anyone know what I can do to somehow restore this? Is there a way to get an old backup from Google Drive?