Backup overkill?

[CharlesLewis]

I use Lookout to backup my phone, but i have also been copying my SD card to a directory on the computer. Is this latter something that would be helpful in case of a crash, re-boot, or new phone? Or is Lookout getting everything that is useful?

I ask right now because I am having problems with lots of stuff slowing down and suspect that restoring my Droid X to its factory settings might be something I need to consider. The last time I did that to a computer, I wound up with several days of headaches trying to restore everything. I was thinking that I could simply copy the backup directory back to the phone, but would that work?

I'm not particularly worried about data, since most of mine is stored in Google or Dropbox, but it would be nice to avoid re-setting all of the settings and downloading again all of the apps.

Has anyone had relevant experience?

 

[T.M.M.L]

Greetings Charles,

The only "cons" to backing up your SD to computer is it takes a little time and space. Media failure is a part of today's life. Drives, SD cards, and other media storage can die without warning. I don't see anything wrong with having multiple ways of accessing saved information.

I've never used lookout, so I don't know exactly the level of its backup power.

I use Titanium backup. It saves all my apps and their settings. I have an option of re-installing any or all apps that I have backed up as well as their data.

Like you said, most of your data is stored by Google, so its just a matter of re-installing your apps.

I change ROMs a lot, so I used to using Titanium to get back to speed.

 

[argedion]

IMO there is no overkill when it comes to backup. I also backup my sd to my computer atleast once a week. I also use titanium backup and can not imagine life without it. I have titanium save my stuff to sdcard and to my dropbox account. I have it scheduled to do so weekly. I was around back in the old days when DOS was Boss and had several virus's wipe me out. I learned then that there is no such thing as to many backups.

As far as your lookout I cannot say how good or bad it is as I have never used it. I always say best to check your backups before a problem occurs that way when it does your prepared. To many times We have had people come in begging us to help them get there stuff back but its an sdcard not a hard drive when its gone its gone. All of which had the user did a backup wouldn't have lost their valuable data.

Titanium Backup is an Awesome app. It's more than a backup really its every rooters dream tool. Unfortunately for those not rooted Titanium will not work for you as it is a Root only tool

 

[chanchan05]

Actually, everything you are doing can't even equal the backup of Titanium, since with Lookout and SD card backup, you aren't able to get backups of app apks, market links and app data (like your Angry Birds progress). When you restore your backups, some of your apps will be back to stage 1.

I would suggest just copying your SD card to PC, then rooting your phone and getting Titanium Pro, then copy the backup files to DropBox or Sugarsync or GDrive. To be more paranoid, get MyBackup Pro as well (Titanium's main competitor).

 

[itsallgood]

As others have said, its never over kill with backups. I remember when I had to do a factory reset on my first android cell phone. (Which wasn’t planned buy the way.) I lost everything, since I was new to smartphones. Needless to say, I back up my SD card and Internal storage to my computer. It is time consuming, but well worth it. As far as Lookout, I use it too and it only backs up your photo’s, contacts and call logs.

As others have said, it’s a good idea to check your backups. We put all this personal stuff on our phones and just trust that someone else is going to back them up. Until we find out that, our stuff wasn’t backed up like we thought or backup wrong.

 

[CharlesLewis]

Thanks for the feedback. I haven't gotten the courage to root yet; I understand that making a mistake could brick my phone, and I don't really need most of the apps that are only available that way. I may do some more research into that and try titanium.

 

[argedion]

Thanks for the feedback. I haven't gotten the courage to root yet; I understand that making a mistake could brick my phone, and I don't really need most of the apps that are only available that way. I may do some more research into that and try titanium.

Chances of Bricking your phone are really slim. I'm more scared about a radio update than I am rooting a phone. Radio update goes wrong then brick you have.