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Fearing the worst: What do I backup in 'master reset' circs?

O

otherchuck

Lurker
Greetings,

I just posted another query to this forum regarding the very common "app keeps stopping" feature of some Android phones (mine is Galaxy S9+). My phone has that disease, and I have tried everything but the nuclear option (master reset) to fix it but have had no luck. In my other post I basically asked "What the heck else can I try besides master reset?" I would LOVE to hear something optimistic in response to that previous post, but...having tried a lot of stuff already (incl wipe cache partition)...my pessimistic/realistic gut says that we are probably heading for a master reset.

So, anticipating that worst case scenario, what do I need to know about a master reset? I know I need to backup (or lose) all my photos, files, downloads...what else? Do I lose my contacts? If so, I presume I can find instructions online on how to back those up, but maybe y'all can point me in the right direction. But what about my text conversations? Do they disappear in a master reset, or are they possibly "in the cloud" and become available to me again after the master reset? If the text conversations disappear, is there a way I can save those? I presume every single app I have ever downloaded from Google Play disappears? Am I supposed to log out of all possible Google accounts before I do a master reset for some reason?

I can't think of anything I could have possibly done to invite the Android "app keeps stopping" feature, but if there is ANYTHING anyone can think of to help me get this phone back to functional short of the nuclear option of master reset, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom!

Otherchuck
 
first off, the term you are looking for is a hard reset and not a master reset....there is no such thing as a master reset.

and yes a hard reset will delete everything so backing up is essential. what phone do you have? the reason why i ask is that certain manufacturer's like samsung for instance has their own backup utility. samsung has smart switch that will backup most things except for text messages. so depending on what phone you have will determine how easy it will be to back things up.

are your contacts saved by google? or just the local phone? if there are under google, then they are automatically backed up and you do not have to do anything.

try SMS Backup & Restore to backup and restore your text messages.

as far as photos go, if you have google photos......make sure you are logged in and everything is sync'd. google photos will automatically backup your photos for you. it is what i use and i never have to worry about my photos.

other then that i would make sure you either take out your sd card before doing the hard reset or at least make sure you have it copied onto your pc, just in case something goes wrong with the hard reset and your sd card gets screwed up.

and there is no need to log out of all of your accounts before doing the reset. just make sure that you know what your google acct info (email and password) because a hard reset will trip FRP(Factory Reset Protection) and you will not be able to bypass it unless you know your email and password used to setup the phone. so just verify you have the info before proceeding.

i hope i answered all of your questions, if not feel free to keep asking.
 
Thank you so much for your thoughtful response.

I have been playing around with other stuff re the "apps keep stopping" feature, and am becoming increasingly certain a "hard reset" is in my future (and, yes, I thought the term was "hard reset" rather than "master reset" but saw the latter term used elsewhere).

Full disclosure: I fear 'the cloud' like a celebrity actress who had naked pictures of herself on her phone also fears 'the cloud.' Rightly or wrongly, I assume that anything saved to 'the cloud' is now in public domain. My expectation of privacy/security as far as 'the cloud' is concerned is zero. Since I can 'hard' back-up photos and docs (and by 'hard' I mean simply file transfer, no cloud) those things aren't the problem. I'd like to save text conversations if I can, but not if that means that I have to save them to 'the cloud.'

You mentioned a product called 'SMS Backup & Restore.' Is there a 'cloud' component to that? If that product downloads text conversations locally to a file I can later access, great. If that product uploads conversations to 'the cloud' for me to download later, different story.

Thanks again! This whole affair has been so dispiriting. I wish there was a bricks-and-mortar place I could go to and say "Hi, please fix my phone." But there are no Android fix-it shops that I know of, and if there were, I think their first impulse would be to send everything to 'the cloud.'

otherchuck
 
otherchuck said:
Thank you so much for your thoughtful response.

I have been playing around with other stuff re the "apps keep stopping" feature, and am becoming increasingly certain a "hard reset" is in my future (and, yes, I thought the term was "hard reset" rather than "master reset" but saw the latter term used elsewhere).

Full disclosure: I fear 'the cloud' like a celebrity actress who had naked pictures of herself on her phone also fears 'the cloud.' Rightly or wrongly, I assume that anything saved to 'the cloud' is now in public domain. My expectation of privacy/security as far as 'the cloud' is concerned is zero. Since I can 'hard' back-up photos and docs (and by 'hard' I mean simply file transfer, no cloud) those things aren't the problem. I'd like to save text conversations if I can, but not if that means that I have to save them to 'the cloud.'

You mentioned a product called 'SMS Backup & Restore.' Is there a 'cloud' component to that? If that product downloads text conversations locally to a file I can later access, great. If that product uploads conversations to 'the cloud' for me to download later, different story.

Thanks again! This whole affair has been so dispiriting. I wish there was a bricks-and-mortar place I could go to and say "Hi, please fix my phone." But there are no Android fix-it shops that I know of, and if there were, I think their first impulse would be to send everything to 'the cloud.'

otherchuck
Click to expand...
please read this:
https://www.engadget.com/android-gmail-stop-running-webview-234125352.html
 
otherchuck said:
Full disclosure: I fear 'the cloud' like a celebrity actress who had naked pictures of herself on her phone also fears 'the cloud.' Rightly or wrongly, I assume that anything saved to 'the cloud' is now in public domain. My expectation of privacy/security as far as 'the cloud' is concerned is zero. Since I can 'hard' back-up photos and docs (and by 'hard' I mean simply file transfer, no cloud) those things aren't the problem. I'd like to save text conversations if I can, but not if that means that I have to save them to 'the cloud.'

You mentioned a product called 'SMS Backup & Restore.' Is there a 'cloud' component to that? If that product downloads text conversations locally to a file I can later access, great. If that product uploads conversations to 'the cloud' for me to download later, different story.
Click to expand...
It makes a local backup which you can copy to somewhere safe yourself, then copy back to the phone after a reset and use the same app to restore the messages. It can also optionally copy the backup to Google Drive, but that is optional.

I find it useful to replace the phrase "the cloud" with "someone else's server". That gives a clearer picture of what "cloud storage" really means: your data are copied to some corporation's server, where they accept no responsibility for what happens to them and where your only privacy from that corporation itself (never mind anyone who gains access to their system) is if you encrypted the data before upload. Many people accept this as a trade-off for convenience or just for having a backup at all, and when you consider how many posts we get asking "I just reset my phone and deleted all of my photos and videos, how do I get them back?" there is definitely merit in this for many people. But I also suspect that many people don't think at all about what this means (because many people don't understand anything about technology, and the fuzzy warm marketing name "the cloud" helps them to not think).
 
Thanks for the kind advice ocnbrz, and Hadron (Smoke me a kipper)...I could not agree more with your characterization of "the cloud." Interesting that SMS Backup and Restore is not cloud-based.

I applied the fix I saw at the end of the latest update of the Endgadget piece, so we shall see.

One thing I saw when I was updating Android System WebView that cracked me up was this:

"Join the beta: Try new features before they're officially released and give your feedback to the developer"

I think I am part of the beta already, right? Tried the new features, and I doubt they want my feedback.

otherchuck
 
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