Question about restoring Google Drive Backup

[Gonzo78]

I recently upgraded from a S21 to a S23. I traded in the 21 so the data transfer was done at the store. I had gigs of video and pictures on my phone, all of which were backed up on google photos, so when it got to that part of the transfer rather than wait hours to move things I didn't need moved I told them I should be good at that point.

I did that because I thought all of the call log and texts had been transferred. When I opened the new phone everything appeared to be there.

As it turns out they had been restored via the Verizon service and it was only the last 90 days of messages. I don't delete emails or texts generally, so I had years of messages on the old phone.

If I don't recover them it's not that big of a deal obviously, but it's a little annoying. I realize it's my fault for not doing a more thorough check while I was there, so at this point it's on me.

In my google drive account I can see that there is a back of the old phone. However it seems I'd have to do a hard reset of the new phone to restore it. Not a huge deal, but if I can avoid spending a couple/few hours doing that and getting the new phone and apps all set back I'm all for it.

So with all that out of the way, is it possible to extract the back up data from my previous phone's backup and get the sms messages out?

I've tried demos of several programs that are supposed to be able to do this, but when I ran scans on my Google account with them they didn't come back with any data. I can't remember the names of the programs off the top of my head, but I tried several of the top ones that were suggested when I googled this.

Any suggestions? I know it's a first world problem, but if there's a solution I'm happy to hear it lol

 

[Milo Williamson]

I recently upgraded from a S21 to a S23. I traded in the 21 so the data transfer was done at the store. I had gigs of video and pictures on my phone, all of which were backed up on google photos, so when it got to that part of the transfer rather than wait hours to move things I didn't need moved I told them I should be good at that point.

I did that because I thought all of the call log and texts had been transferred. When I opened the new phone everything appeared to be there.

As it turns out they had been restored via the Verizon service and it was only the last 90 days of messages. I don't delete emails or texts generally, so I had years of messages on the old phone.

If I don't recover them it's not that big of a deal obviously, but it's a little annoying. I realize it's my fault for not doing a more thorough check while I was there, so at this point it's on me.

In my google drive account I can see that there is a back of the old phone. However it seems I'd have to do a hard reset of the new phone to restore it. Not a huge deal, but if I can avoid spending a couple/few hours doing that and getting the new phone and apps all set back I'm all for it.

So with all that out of the way, is it possible to extract the back up data from my previous phone's backup and get the sms messages out?

I've tried demos of several programs that are supposed to be able to do this, but when I ran scans on my Google account with them they didn't come back with any data. I can't remember the names of the programs off the top of my head, but I tried several of the top ones that were suggested when I googled this.

Any suggestions? I know it's a first world problem, but if there's a solution I'm happy to hear it lol

You are a little bit crazy on keeping up everything lol...
They should all be stored on the Verizon cloud account. Did you double check that first, I am an anti-google photo person. I use Terabox for my photos.

 

[Dannydet]

Samsung Smart switch

 

[svim]

It's really important for you to get a better understanding on how Google has been gradually changing its Google Photos into a much more proprietary, vendor-locking service. Your expectations that terms like 'Sync' have been redefined to match up with Google's current business plan. So when you use the Google Photos app, you'll be viewing your library of photos and videos BUT the actual photo and/or video files themselves may or may not actually reside within your phone's internal storage media. That's the big issue. They may or may not be on your phone, but they are all stored within your online Google account.
Using the Google Photos app on your phone will show you your entire photo/video library, a merged collection of media files both stored on your phone and on Google's online servers. But if you use a file manager app on your phone, that's only going to show you the photo and video files that are stored on your phone.
-- You can get around this by tweaking options in the Google Photos app on your phone, but that will only affect your Google Photos service going forward, it will not apply retro-actively. (Change Backup quality to Original and stay clear of that Free up device storage option.)

If you do want to have your entire photo and video library stored within both your phone and in your Google account, it's going to be a bit of a messy project. Using just Google Photos (using either the app on your phone or its web interface) will very, very time and effort consuming. So a workaround is to use the Google Takeout service to make a single, downloadable zip file of your entire collection.

Sign in - Google Accounts

Log into your Google account, deselect all the shown categories except Google Photos, and then depending on your large your media file library is it might take a while before you get a finished message with a link to download the zip archive file. De-compress that zip onto your phone and it that will restore all the photos and videos that were in your online Google Photos account. (Note at that point you'll have a messy mix of duplicates, the existing photos/videos that were already on your phone with those recently downloaded files.)
-- On related topic, using Google Takeout is a good way to make a backup of your entire Google account into a single file. And it can use user accessible file types so that's a major plus. It's also a good way to get a grip on just how extensive Google is about storing our personal files and such.
If you've been using Google for several years, don't be surprised how long it takes to do a Google Takeout backup file (could be several hours and the zip file itself several GBs in size).

If your seeing old backups of your photos and videos in your Google Drive service, for several years the Google Photos service and the Google Drive service could be linked to automatically sync your media files between each service. But Google killed that off in 2019 in its push to vendor-lock users to Google Photos.

Google Photos will stop syncing to Drive on July 10, 2019

What’s changing Starting on July 10, 2019, Google Photos will no longer sync to Google Drive. From that date forward, if you add or delete f...

workspaceupdates.googleblog.com

Regarding your old text messages, don't spend too much time trying to find a solution. The odds are those are lost forever, unless you still have that Galaxy S21 phone. Trying to restore old text messages from old backup files is pointless, you can't restore data that doesn't exist.
However, if you do still have possession of that Galaxy S21 (not a backup file but the phone itself), install this SMS Backup & Restore app on both phones, use it make a export a backup file of your text messages (and phone call log if necessary), and the use the app to import that backup file into your Galaxy S23 phone.

SMS Backup & Restore - Apps on Google Play

A simple app that backs up and restores SMS & MMS messages and call logs.

play.google.com