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Help Help! How do I back up & restore without Kies?

K

Kermitpower

Lurker
Hi all,

This is my first post on here, so hello to all!

I have a Galaxy S3. :) My poor S3 has a broken screen. :(

It therefore has to go away to be repaired, and I have to wipe everything off it before it goes.

Problem is, I just can't get Kies to recognise my phone! :mad:

Kies Air works fine, but doesn't seem to let me do a backup/restore, and trying to use Kies over USB on my desktop (Win 7) just won't find the phone at all. It gave me a variety of error messages about drivers not installing, and now just sits there telling me it can't find a hardware ID or some such.

So.... I can't afford to spend any more time trying to get Kies to work, and I really want to just be able to plug the phone into my PC so that I can back everything up, wipe it and send it away, then, when I get it back, just plug it in, press restore, and have my phone restored to exactly the way it is now.

Is this possible? Are there any Apps which do this? I did try a search on here, but it just returned lots of results about Kies.

If it makes a difference, I cannot root the phone, as this would put me several miles on the wrong side of my employer's security policies!

Thanks in advance for any help. :D
 
I use Carbon

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.koushikdutta.backup&hl=en

You don't need a rooted phone to back up apps and data with this app.

I used it the other day as I wanted to do a factory reset. You do need to install an app on your PC then connect phone to PC. The app explains what to do very well.

I then backed up everything to my external SD card. After my factory reset I just re downloaded Carbon and the restore was a complete success.
 
Welcome!

Sadly, this is one of the most frequently asked questions here. Android does NOT have a standard full backup....yet....without Root. The only TRUE backup is a NANdroid backup, which is deeper than you want to go.

What I recommend is getting Carbon, which backs up much of what you probably want to save. As to actually doing what an iPhone does, not going to happen yet. Google loves their cloud, so they will shy away from wires.
 
Thanks for the quick answers chaps!

Just to clarify, I don't necessarily want to do the backup locally via a wired connection - I just wanted to be able to press one button to re-install and reconfigure everything, rather than having to go and reload each and every app individually.

I know that Google Play keeps a list of all the apps I've installed, but even so, re-installing 100+ apps one at a time is tiresome, even if they're all listed in the same place!
 
Google play will backup all apps, data, and contacts if you've allowed it.

When you sign into your new phone they should automatically start installing
 
Rxpert83 said:
Google play will backup all apps, data, and contacts if you've allowed it.

When you sign into your new phone they should automatically start installing
Click to expand...

My main concern there is that it won't be a new phone. It will be my old one coming back from repair, just having been wiped before sending it off.

Ideally, I'd like to keep all the apps still on there and just wipe the me-specific info if that's possible, with some way of automatically restoring it?
 
Kermitpower said:
Thanks for the quick answers chaps!

Just to clarify, I don't necessarily want to do the backup locally via a wired connection - I just wanted to be able to press one button to re-install and reconfigure everything, rather than having to go and reload each and every app individually.

I know that Google Play keeps a list of all the apps I've installed, but even so, re-installing 100+ apps one at a time is tiresome, even if they're all listed in the same place!
Click to expand...

Carbon will do that. For some reason you need to install an app on your PC to get it to work. Carbon will backup ALL apps and data at once and restore the same. That is if you play any games you won't lose your save games. Not sure how much of the system data it will restore as I purposely didn't include that in my backup. Also it didn't retain all my contacts - not sure why.

The process is:

1) Download Carbon app onto your phone
2) Go to carbon website and download and install PC app
3) Connect phone to PC to 'initialise' the Carbon app - instructions are quite clear.
4) Do your backup - I did my backup onto my 32 GB SD card
5) Wipe phone and remove your SD card
6) When you get phone back repeat steps 1) and 3) above
7) Put in your SD card an re install all your apps and data via Carbon

As ExtremeNerd has already said the only way to do a full back up is on a rooted phone and use something like Titanium Backup.
 
Android really should have a simple fast way of completely backing up a stock phone by now imo
Is it true iPhones can do it?
 
funkylogik said:
Android really should have a simple fast way of completely backing up a stock phone by now imo
Is it true iPhones can do it?
Click to expand...

Yes and Yes.

iTunes creates a full backup (similar to NANdroid) that can be restored quickly and easily. Google really, really dropped the ball here. I assume it is because there are so many different phones, since backups aren't compatible across devices. One iPhone makes this an easy backup.

Most people complain about game data. I see this issue being fixed in KLP since Amazon has already launched their solution.
 
Android does have a native backup option since ICS, you need to run it via ADB though. Carbon uses the same technology for non-rooted devices, I'm pretty sure.
 
Whats ADB mate?

Yeah i suppoze it would have to be a part of Touchwiz or whatever OEM skin but the fact that its really easy to back up app data when rooted means its more than possible :thumbup:
 
Well, I just tried Carbon, and that doesn't work either. :(

It did, however, get me a little further forward. It seems that the common problem connecting both Kies and Carbon is that the Samsung USB driver keeps failing to install on my PC. :mad:

Does anyone have any thoughts as to what might be causing this?
 
blenky said:
Carbon will do that. For some reason you need to install an app on your PC to get it to work. Carbon will backup ALL apps and data at once and restore the same. That is if you play any games you won't lose your save games. Not sure how much of the system data it will restore as I purposely didn't include that in my backup. Also it didn't retain all my contacts - not sure why.

The process is:

1) Download Carbon app onto your phone
2) Go to carbon website and download and install PC app
3) Connect phone to PC to 'initialise' the Carbon app - instructions are quite clear.
4) Do your backup - I did my backup onto my 32 GB SD card
5) Wipe phone and remove your SD card
6) When you get phone back repeat steps 1) and 3) above
7) Put in your SD card an re install all your apps and data via Carbon

As ExtremeNerd has already said the only way to do a full back up is on a rooted phone and use something like Titanium Backup.
Click to expand...

You did notice that the OP is having problems installing the Drivers for his computer to connect to the S3.
 
Kermitpower said:
My main concern there is that it won't be a new phone. It will be my old one coming back from repair, just having been wiped before sending it off.

Ideally, I'd like to keep all the apps still on there and just wipe the me-specific info if that's possible, with some way of automatically restoring it?
Click to expand...

The same thing I stated still applies. When you sign in, it will automatically re-download everything if you've allowed it to
 
Isnt it only over wifi though?
when i 1st booted my s3 and logged in, i was on wifi and it downloaded all apps from my previous phone. Any time since, ive been on 3g but have had a MyBackup Pro backup
 
I had the same issue. I had Kies and Doubletwist installed and was only wanting to set my iTunes up on my SG3 thru Kies but it kept saying it couldnt find the driver. I uninstalled Kies and DTwist from my phone and my PC. Restarted my phone. Then I reinstalled Kies on my computer and on my phone. Plugged in the SG3 to my PC and it finally recognized it again.
 
blenky said:
I use Carbon

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.koushikdutta.backup&hl=en

You don't need a rooted phone to back up apps and data with this app.

I used it the other day as I wanted to do a factory reset. You do need to install an app on your PC then connect phone to PC. The app explains what to do very well.

I then backed up everything to my external SD card. After my factory reset I just re downloaded Carbon and the restore was a complete success.
Click to expand...
I tried Carbon and couldn't get it to work. It was stuck on an infinite "loading," and I just deleted it althogether after wasting lots of time on it.

JM
 
I seem to have finally managed to back up settings with something called G Cloud which didn't require me to connect to a PC at all.

This was my main concern, as I'm trusting in Google Play to repopulate my apps (although I've not been able to find anywhere in settings that gives me a yes/no choice to do that???), and my music and photos are all on the SD card anyway.
 
To restore the apps, during the first boot (New phone / After Reset), after logging into your Google account, you'll be asked if you want to restore apps and data stored on the account. That will repopulate the apps you had from the Play Store.
 
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