Android Backups Made Easy

With everyone changing phones frequently these days, data loss is possible, and in many cases inevitable. There is always a high risk of losing important data such as contacts and text messages in the process. In this workshop, we show you how you can take a complete backup of your important data, including phone contacts, text and multimedia messages, calendar data, applications, application data and settings, and settings for alarms, network, etc.

Toolbox on MyBackup Pro

The backed-up data is stored in a separate folder on your SD card and can be restored on your new phone. The whole process takes a few minutes (depending on the amount of data and type of data selected). There are a few backup applications available online and presently two well-known utilities seem the most powerful - Titanium Backup and MyBackup Pro. While Titanium Backup features a lot more than just backup and restore, it is not as simple as MyBackup Pro. The two applications cost nearly the same. In this workshop, we’ll walk you through he backup process on MyBackup Pro.

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Copying files on your SD card

Download and install MyBackup Pro from the Android market. Start up the application and you will be greeted by the home screen, which has all the necessary options — Backup to create backups; Restore to restore previously backed up files; Manage to view and delete stored backups; View to view stored backup contents; Schedule for scheduling automatic timely backups; and MyToolbox, where you can select system apps and non-system apps and clear their cache or data.

NOTE: MyBackup Pro will work on all Android mobile devices regardless of whether or not they have root access. Users who have a rooted phone can backup apps, individual data and settings as well as Market links.

Naming your backup files

To begin with, click on ‘MyToolbox’ and select the system apps you also wish to backup. This is purely optional as some users might want to backup their system apps and data too. Once done, go back to the main menu and click on ‘Backup’. Here, you have a choice to select ‘Applications & Media’ or just the ‘Data’. Select the ‘Applications & Media’ and the next screen will prompt you to select the destination for the backup files. Those who prefer ‘Online’ may do so, else, select ‘Local’, wherein MyBackup Pro will store the backups in a default folder ‘Rerware’ under the ‘/mnt/sdcard’ folder.

In action, saving files

MyBackup Pro will scan all the apps in your phone and highlight ’Apps’ and Photos’ on screen. Since the photos are already on your SD card, we can skip them unless you want to back these up online. Remember that you get only 100 MB free space online for your backups and can purchase more if needed. Backups take up a lot of space, so select your backups accordingly. You can either select the checkbox that will select all apps or you can click on the pull-down menu to select individual apps. Once done, click ‘OK’ and the next screen will prompt you to give the backup a name. The next screen will prompt you for the type of backup you want. Select between ‘APKs, Data’ or ‘APKs + Data’ accordingly. The app will start backing up data content and storing it on the destination folder, which will take a few minutes. When it’s completed, a summary of the apps and their data and any other issues will be listed on the screen. If an app is not installed via the Android Market, you’ll get an error stating that the market link is not valid or available. This is normal.

Scheduling the backups

That’s it! Your data is backed up and you can simply copy the contents of the folder to the other phone’s memory, or simply swap the memory cards. To restore, start the Android Market, download ‘MyBackup Pro’ and select the restore option. Follow the on-screen wizard and restore your data on the new phone. Using the scheduler option, you can create a rule to backup data automatically at a given time. Select the time and day for the backups and choose the number of data backups to keep.