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Does Android have a "total backup" option?

I know this needs a rooted device, but what stops somebody doing a Trueimage-type backup solution?

It is completely foolproof, and easy to code (for a specific phone) because you just sequentially read the whole flash, read out any separate EEPROM chips, the code doing it is RAM-resident the whole time and sends the data out over USB to a flash stick. The code would need to support only a flash stick.

It works brilliantly on desktop and laptop computers. The only issue I have found, over ~ 10 years, is compatibility with weird hard drive controllers.

The only thing you would not be able to backup would be chips with unique codes in them, but I don’t think these are used even for the IMEI because even the IMEI can usually be re-writted with factory tools.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

When I did a factory reset on my Android tablet everything I had on there came back from Google as soon as I logged on, obviously there was a delay while it downloaded.

Darley Moor, Gamston (UK)

I just upgraded from my trusty Ipad2 to a new Ipad Air 2 after the trouch screen started failing on the Ipad2, and the restore from back up experience was less than ideal.
Everything came back as it should have except… all my emails – it is a Pop3 account and Apple “assume” the originals are on a server somewhere and can be restored. Mine like most get deleted once they are on my PC.
iBooks only backs up purchases from iTunes. manually added in epub’s or pdf’s are not backed up. Nowhere is any of this documented and a real trap should your original device fail.
I managed to copy across the iBooks but not the emails. The world according to Apple…
Missing that total back up solution!

E

eal
Lovin' it
VTCY VTCC VTBD

I am not shocked because I recall Justine lost all emails off her Iphone4 in that way, although they were in a non-Apple app called Altamail.

There seems to be a lot of “everybody uses Gmail or IMAP” type arrogance in the “usability politburo” thinking, and Android is no different to Apple.

The Android equivalent to that (saving app data) requires rooting. However there are probably multiple stages there of what gets saved. Game scores (for those who care) do need a rooted device, apparently.

When I did a factory reset on my Android tablet everything I had on there came back from Google as soon as I logged on, obviously there was a delay while it downloaded.

I am surprised, because of e.g. this

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Peter wrote:

There seems to be a lot of “everybody uses Gmail or IMAP” type arrogance in the “usability politburo” thinking, and Android is no different to Apple.

That is the easy way. I also have an old e-mail account (since 1997, never use it anymore though, but keep it just in case only as web mail nowadays), but I remember there was a setting in the email client program for keeping or deleting read mail on the server. I have since long stopped storing emails locally.

The elephant is the circulation
ENVA ENOP ENMO, Norway

POP3 eMail is really a thing of the past. I wonder why anybody would use that. I have switched to IMAP (many) years ago, and if course i have all my eMails – everywhere. Why would you expect Apple to support such an old fashioned concept?

I do not think it would be a good way if all the old stuff would be supported forever. But of course you can manually backup all POP3 eMails too. POP3 means all eMails are downloaded to the device and deleted on the server. How can it be Apple’s fault if the device is lost?

Last Edited by Flyer59 at 24 Jul 04:49

eal:
you can of course sync all non itunes PDF’s to your computer via iTunes and restore them to your new iPhone/iPad.

I use GoodReader for PDFs, and although i change iPhones and iPads all the time i have never lost anything.

Why would you expect Apple to support such an old fashioned concept?

It is not an email issue. It is purely an issue of whether what most people would call a “backup” preserves the application data. On IOS, it depends on where the app stores it. On Android, the app has to be more pro-active to achieve a backup, it seems.

The POP/IMAP stuff is not relevant to this. But, on POP, we have discussed this before a few times and there are valid reasons for running POP. One of them might be the need to be able to access emails from many years ago (for legal reasons) which means continuing to use an email program which doesn’t support IMAP. Within the last few weeks, I have saved myself masses of hassle and about five digits of expense, by being able to produce emails from 15 years ago. Coincidentally it happened with two customers at the same time… (I do realise I could throw some money at a programmer to get a converter done, which converts all our emails to a format which can be IMAP-hosted, but I like our email software. It doesn’t do HTML emails, doesn’t ever execute any attachments, so sidesteps a whole load of issues. And then we need to pay more money for a graduated backup of the IMAP server…). Another reason might be a distrust of “the cloud” – see my thread on google and privacy. I think I have found out what they are going.

POP3 means all eMails are downloaded to the device and deleted on the server

The deletion is optional. Normally one configures to not delete on all mobile clients, and delete on one machine on which there is a defined archiving procedure (in my case, daily backup, weekly backup, monthly backup, all to different destinations – IAW standard business practice). There is also a basic security issue: an IMAP server has zero security (all your emails, all the way back, are up for grabs) if anybody gets their hands on any client device configured to access it. Whereas with POP, they will get only the messages which are still on there (usually a day’s worth). Same with webmail of course, like Gmail… anybody who gets into your Gmail account gets everything, your whole life history.

you can of course sync all non itunes PDF’s to your computer via iTunes and restore them to your new iPhone/iPad.

I can now see this, but how many people will realise it, after everybody has been pushing “cloud backup”? Under 1% IMHO. Anyway, it seems to be accepted (?) that most people lose all their photos at some stage. But they don’t care because they have already uploaded them to facebook Actually a lot of people do care but they know nothing about IT. A lot of professional photographers “lose” vital material, sometimes because they saved it where they can’t find it again.

One just has to agree to disagree on this. There will always be a difference between people who want to keep stuff, who want to control their data and backups (and have easily verifiable backups), and people who aren’t too bothered, and the latter are the vast majority, especially with – for most people – emails de facto merging with instant messaging and being treated in the same way (read only the first few lines, etc).

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

I have never lost one single photo, and I have been using iPhones since 2010. All you have to do is connect it to your computer and back them up. Besides that they are all synced with the cloud (Photostream) in full resolution anyway. So it’s really hard to lose photos. But i think that people are creative enough to manage :-)

Well, about “distrusting the cloud”. You think your eMails are safer on your PC running XP? ;-)

By the way: there’s many tools for archiving IMAP eMails if you need that. I would never use POP3 again, because that means that the eMail I am looking for is always on some other device … and with 3 offices, two ipads, three Macs and an iPhone …, with IMAP i have everything everywhere Also my GMX eMail has 5 GBs, goes back to 2010, i think … anything older than that I don’t care :-)

Last Edited by Flyer59 at 24 Jul 07:14

There are many ways of archiving e-mails in a legally compliant manner that don’t involve using POP and keeping copies of all your mail in a rickety old bit of software.

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