Help Backing up SGS2 on Mac?

[chiefroastbeef]

Hello,

Is there a way to back up the entire phone on a mac (so that I can wipe it, and the backup would get me to the exact previous state)? Or via an micro SD card of some sort without the need to root?

Thanks!

 

[lotus49]

Sadly not in a way that could be described as elegant or easy.

At least you needn't feel discriminated against, you can't do it on a PC either.

However, you can achieve the same thing (painfully) in several steps.

1. root your phone (if you haven't done this, you needn't be intimidated, it is pretty easy)
2. create a nandroid backup using CWM (CWM will be installed as part of rooting, this will make a full backup of the contents of your NAND ROM)
3. mount the internal disks on your Mac and copy the contents of the two disks to your Mac.

It's (very) ugly compared to backing up an iPhone and indeed restoring is even uglier but it is possible.

Sadly the SGS2 is a great phone , with a decent, extremely flexible albeit somewhat unattractive and user unfriendly OS, totally let down by appalling desktop integration. The desktop integration sucks if you are running Windows and sadly sucks even more if you are running a Mac (as I am). If you haven't attempted to sync with iTunes yet, prepare for more "fun" (=pain and heartache).

 

[chiefroastbeef]

Yea, I'll root my phone soon as soon as I feel comfortable with voiding my warranty.

I have parellels running windows 7, do you think there is a chance a virtual machine can do backups? It did for my blackberry.

Thank you very much.

 

[lotus49]

Yea, I'll root my phone soon as soon as I feel comfortable with voiding my warranty.

I have parellels running windows 7, do you think there is a chance a virtual machine can do backups? It did for my blackberry.

Thank you very much.

Whether that really does void your warranty depends on where you live and whether they can find out (it is reversible).

There is no reason that I can think why this wouldn't work with a VM. Using ClockworkMod to do the nandroid backup puts the backup in /sdcard so if you back up what is confusingly called the USB storage and the contents of the SD card then you will automatically have copied everything you need. Since all you need to do this on your computer is to be able to connect a USB drive to it, it should work fine on a VM.

That said, it should work almost exactly the same on a Linux or Mac so why do it in a VM?

 

[chiefroastbeef]

Thank you for the tip! I will look into clockworkmod! I have an 8gb and 16gb microsd sitting around (just got a 32gb), so I can use one of those for back up!

Thank you again for your help.