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Help no way ro restore from back up?

U

ulao

Well-Known Member
I'm in a catch 22 here, how can I fix this?

phone A nexus 5, phone B nexus 5

My phone A has the latest 8.1 installed and a good backup.
My phone B need to be reset to factory to restore? WTF?

When I try to restore after a factory reset I get errors and clearly the issue is that you can not restore from 8.1 to 7. So how do I restore? If I must do a factor reset, that puts me in a bit of a rock and a hard place if backups can not go up a version. Removing the account does not help either. Is there no easy way to tell it to restore my files after the phone is updated and I had to put an account on it.
 
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A few questions to understand what you are saying:

* Are you trying to restore a backup of Phone A to Phone B? That seems most likely, but it's not completely unambiguous.
* What did you use to make this backup? What did it include?
* Is there a reason you can't put 8.1 onto Phone B?

The second question is probably the most important.
 
*Are you trying to restore a backup of Phone A to Phone B? That seems most likely, but it's not completely unambiguous.
Yes

* What did you use to make this backup? What did it include?
the normal google back up and sync.

* Is there a reason you can't put 8.1 onto Phone B?
its on there now.

I seem to fail at this explain things LOL. It's hard to explain because mainly it make no sense. And second because its a catch 22. The only way to restore from a backup is a factory data reset. The only way to do a restore from a back up is a going from lower OS to greater.

So...

If I reset to factor I'm now at a lower OS, so I must update to 8.1, but to do that I need to add an account. but adding the account forces me to restore then and there ,not after the update.
 
I'm still a little puzzled. There's no official 8.1 or even 7 for the Nexus 5, so these are presumably custom ROMs you are using. So if you cant to back up phone A and restore to phone B then you could Titanium Backup or even a backup made with your custom recovery (a "nandroid") rather than dealing with the Google thing.

And if you are using custom ROMs I don't see any need to add an account to update?

I know less about the Google backup as I've never really relied on it (especially in my rooting days). I know there's some jiggery-pokery can be used to restore it to a new phone (as described e.g. here), which is effectively what you are trying to do, and I can't see why that would require a newer OS version (which if you are restoring an 8.1 backup isn't going to be an option unless you have a 9.0 ROM for the other device). After all, people must use it to restore to a replacement phone, which may well be the same model and android version. So is it that procedure you were trying to follow and which is refusing to restore?

If it persists in being troublesome and both devices are on 8.1 I'd be tempted to use Titanium, a flash drive and an OTG cable and bypass the Google system. If both are the same ROM then you should be able to restore literally everything that way (it's not a good idea to try to restore system data between different ROMs, that's likely to end in a bootloop).
 
There are usually partition changes having to do with location and actual size capacity, which are installed via the OS update. So no, it's very likely to cause massive issues. If you are using TWRP, the best way to run your 'backup' is to transport the TWRP backup files to a 'Kitchen', I recommend @SuperR 's Kitchen:
(free - https://forum.xda-developers.com/ap...chen-superr-s-kitchen-v1-1-50-v2-1-6-t3597434
Donate - https://forum.xda-developers.com/ap...dows-linux-superr-s-kitchen-v3-0-0-0-t3601702)
unpack and (deodex if desired/needed) repack, and flash via TWRP. BAM, you'll be running nougat again. But you'll have to always factory reset anyways when switching any OS's/ROMs. Another option is custom ROMs like LineageOS or BlissROM (just a cpl Examples), just look for codename 'hammerhead':
 
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yup, I know. Well I knew better. This is just really frustrating. Such a simple thing with a hug blaring catch 22 bug in it.
 
But I still find it surprising. The restore cannot require a higher Android version to work, because if you have to replace a device due to a fault under warranty you'd not be able to restore the backup. And you said that both phones A and B are on 8.1, so restoring to a lower version shouldn't come into it (though I'm not quite sure where Android 7 comes into this).

So if you try to follow the recipe I linked in a previous post, what actually happens?
 
Sorry if I said that wrong but I'm referring to this.
"You can't restore a backup from a higher Android version onto a device running a lower Android version."
https://support.google.com/android/answer/2819582?hl=en

I have my B phone on 8.1 ( A is 8.1) but there is no restore button on the phone. I must factory reset to get the option to restore, and that will reset to 7. This is a catch 22, because of the above statement. 8.1 -> 7 = no worry.

At this point I don't want to use Titanium because google should offer this. So on 8.1 how do I restore without selecting factory reset.
 
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Ah, that's the confusion. If so this might not be a problem because a factory reset will not reset your OS to 7, you will still be on 8.1.

"Factory reset" should really be called "Factory data reset". All it does is erase all data and settings on the phone, reverting it to "factory condition". But it does nothing whatsoever to the system software, so "factory condition" means "the condition a new phone running this version of the software would be in" rather than "the state this particular phone was in when it left the factory". The phone does not have a spare copy of the original software on it, so there is no Android 7 on your phone that could be restored - each update simply replaces the previous system.

It is a name that confuses a lot of people.
 
Why does it reset to 7 then? This also confused me a bit. Last night I was thinking, what a waste of storage. Though now that you say that it puzzles me even more. I can give it another go.
 
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