[Q] Make a backup before flashing

[pemell]

Hi.

Last time I flashed a new firmware I made a backup of the phone. The problem was that I couldn't get it back after flashing.

So, my question is:

How on earth do I make a backup of everything before flashing. And how do I restore it afterwords.

Thanks in advance
Pemell

 

[davortsan]

Hi pemell,

How did you generate the backup? Yesterday I generated a full backup of my Lumia 800 and the command that I executed was the following:

sudo dd if=/dev/sdX of=~/fulldump

This generated the fulldump file (16GB).

David Ortega.

 

[ChrisKringel]

I'd suggest that you back up in two ways: First in Zune and then via the DD. I would suggest that you create a separate backup of each partition in order to make reflashing easier.

 

[pemell]

davortsan - I didn't update by cab sending so aren't that familiar with these commands. I guess of course I could find out by some testing and reading.

chrisKringel - two partitions? are there two partitions? If the phone had a memorycard I would get where you're going.

kind of strange there are no step by step guide of how to backup pre flashing and restore afterwords. I'm too much of a noob to write it myself.

 

[ChrisKringel]

chrisKringel - two partitions? are there two partitions? If the phone had a memorycard I would get where you're going.

Let's take a computer for example. When you open up explorer on said computer you see multiple HDD-icons. One for the system, one for Music and Pictures and one for games. This doesn't necessarily mean that this computer has 3 physical HDDs as you can split up a storage device into multiple logical partitions. The computer can easily have only one physical drive.

Same thing goes for our Lumias. They have (as far as I know) only one NAND chip that stores all the data. But this chip is split up into 9 logical partitions, containing the bootloader, serialnumber, mac etc. (head over to the Development Section, a few of the early posts discuss the partitions). When you have a Linux at your hands you can use the DD command to dump every single partition. Of course you should only touch the 9th partition later but better safe than sorry. In order to backup with Linux you have to either run the full dump command from above. When you want to reflash the fulldump every single partitions gets reset to the state from when you created the backup. I never tried this but I would not advise to reflash all partitions. I'd rather advise you to create a single backup of each partition. Charge your phone and enter QUALCOMM mode. Plug it into your Linux and run the commands

dd if=/dev/sdX1 of=backup1.bin

dd if=/dev/sdX2 of=backup2.bin

... repeat for every number until the following ...

dd if=/dev/sdX9 of=backup9.bin

X refers to the mount point where your device is connected. You can use fdisk -l to get the right letter. When you need to restore your device you need only partition 9, but better safe than sorry You never know, these additional backups might come in handy sometime...


What do you intend to do? Do you want to have your Apps back after you flashed your phone?

 

[pemell]

Thanks Chris, a perfect post!

I know that most of the information on the phone comes from the cloud, but some doesn't. For exemple I use the call history a lot and I would like to keep all of my sms+mms. Reinstalling all the apps is, of course, something i would prefer not to do at every update (even though they don't come that often).

I'll look into the information you posted and see what I can come up with. / Pemell

 

[ChrisKringel]

Thanks Chris, a perfect post!

I know that most of the information on the phone comes from the cloud, but some doesn't. For exemple I use the call history a lot and I would like to keep all of my sms+mms. Reinstalling all the apps is, of course, something i would prefer not to do at every update (even though they don't come that often).

I'll look into the information you posted and see what I can come up with. / Pemell

Keeping the specified data like messages, settings and call history during a reflash is not easily possible. When you reflash (or flash) your phone all the data gets wiped and completely new data is written to the phone. There are some homebrew solutions for texts in the WP7 Dev & Hacking boards that might work, depending on your current ROM. Another thing is that the flash you do when using the methods described in this board is different from a flash in a Nokia Care Point. The official flashing flashes in a certain way that the first boot writes all the phone data in the registry, like the WP activation key and some other serials. This won't happen when you write the file in Qualcomm mode. This could cause problems when you try to restore a backup from Zune. I'm not really sure about this, though.

Another thing to note is that some ROMs are not updateable through Zune, on these ROMs you have to do a manual update or a new flash to get up to date.

I would suggest that you wait a few weeks if you can. Maybe Microsoft will announce a cloud backup for text messages when the introduce WP8. A official backup would be the safest way.

 

[pemell]

Thanks Chris, a good advice.