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Root Newbie, little confused about Nandroid

K

keyd

Newbie
Hi all,

Sorry I know there have probably been a million posts to this effect but I recently discovered this whole rooting thing and after reading lots I'm still a little confused about a few things.

Nandroid backup - If i've got this right this is obtained by flashing clockwork mod onto the desire. It then takes a complete image of the phone as it is (I presume there is no going back to original recovery once clockwork mod is on or have I misunderstood this?)
The image it takes does this include texts etc? so that if I don't like the new rom or I do something wrong I can go back without fear of losing texts.
Am I also right in thinking that no matter what ROM i flash this backup can always go back on the phone?

If I wanted the texts on the newly rooted/flashed ROM I would need to make a separate titanium or mybackup backup?

Probably more questions as I read more but thanks in advance
 
Firstly, there are a set of excellent guides and FAQs linked from the sticky post "all about rooting" (which the red link in my sig will take you to). Do read them carefully, because the answers to most basic questions, and some fairly advanced ones, are in there.

But while I'm here:

* rooting using unrevoked flashes clockworkmod recovery to your phone (by default, but some devices should load Amon RA instead - it's in the rooting faq). Unrooting using an RUU will also replace this with the original HTC recovery. There is no conceivable reason you'd want the original recovery other than that you want/need to unroot.

* You take a nandroid backup by booting into recovery and selecting "backup". You can take multiple nandroids, can copy them to a computer, etc. The nandroid is actually a set of images which between them cover almost everything on the phone (the radio is not backed-up).

* These images do include the ROM, all user apps and all app data, and call logs and texts are app data. So yes, they are backed-up, and if you restore the nandroid it will put your phone back in exactly the state it was in when the backup was made. You can indeed use it to revert to an earlier ROM, but remember that any texts sent/received after the backup was made will not be included.

* To transfer texts to a different ROM you should use something like SMS Backup+ or MyBackup. To transfer apps and/or app data you should use Titanium (Ti can back up texts, but they are stored as part of the data of a system app which may not be compatible between all ROMs, so a separate message backup is a better solution). A nandroid cannot be used to transfer apps or data between ROMs, only to restore the phone completely to a previous state.

Edit: and while we're here, a very important point. Do not be tempted to use an app called ROM Manager, no matter how many recommendations you read. It does not play well with a Desire rooted using unrevoked, and we've seen people get into some very nasty problems using it to make nandroid backups (fixable, but not something you'd want to have to do by choice).
 
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