Rooting and backup

[pwabrahams]

I've seen the advice to do a Nandroid backup before rooting my Moto E phone. But all the instructions I've seen so far for doing such a backup assume that the phone is already rooted. How can I do this backup on a unrooted phone?

 

[scary alien]

Yeah, I can see how that is confusing, @pwabrahams...

There are really several ways to think about how that is suggested and phrased--mainly because of the manner/method in which is root is achieved.

You typically need to root in order to get a custom recovery installed--but not always. For example, on a device with an unlocked bootloader (like a Nexus), if you have a custom recovery installed (or booted-up--you don't actually have to install it by overwriting the stock recovery), you can take a snapshot (by doing a Nandroid backup) of your current stock ROM/setup--all without having to root your device.

I'm guessing that most of the suggested, best practice of taking a Nandroid backup is to do so as early, soon as possible after rooting and certainly before you make any changes to your /system partition. This is/was encouraged mainly so that you have a means to recovery and reverting back to a known, good, working state should something go awry.

So, you can take a Nandroid backup on an unrooted device--but only for devices that have a custom recovery available and a means for flashing or soft-booting it. Otherwise, you do need to be rooted in order to get your custom recovery installed.

[it's also important to note that the Nexus devices have widely available factory images, so doing this for those devices is only useful if you want to save the current state of whatever ROM you have installed--stock or custom or stock/rooted, etc...]

Does that help / make any sense?

Cheers!

 

[pwabrahams]

You typically need to root in order to get a custom recovery installed--but not always. For example, on a device with an unlocked bootloader (like a Nexus), if you have a custom recovery installed (or booted-up--you don't actually have to install it by overwriting the stock recovery), you can take a snapshot (by doing a Nandroid backup) of your current stock ROM/setup--all without having to root your device.

According to the Motorola webpage, it's possible to unlock the bootloader, and they give instructions on how to do it. The trouble, though, is that the instructions require you to be in recovery mode (the mode you get into by pressing the power and volume down buttons together). But in that mode, adb does not see the phone; its list of devices is empty. On the other hand, if I try to fastboot from the PC when not in recovery mode, fastboot just hangs waiting for the device. So I'm damned if I do and damned if I don't.

Are there any settings in the Developer area on the phone, perhaps, that might resolve this issue?

 

[scary alien]

Only fastboot can see your device while in fastboot / bootloader mode--it often requires fastboot-specific USB drivers--i.e., ones that differ from the adb drivers.

adb only works when an Android kernel is booted-up, i.e., either in normal Android with USB debugging enabled and the RSA fingerprint verified or in custom recovery (also, you often have to disable MTP to get adb to connect in custom recovery). The adb utility also often requires it own special USB drivers.

(note: USB drivers are not typically an issue when using a Mac or Linux, although you need to start the adb server from root)

So you'll use fastboot to unlock the bootloader and not adb.

 

[pwabrahams]

Thanks so much! My phone is now unlocked. At the moment it seems to be downloading all my previously installed apps, which I assume will take a long time. Most of my data that doesn't belong to a specific app is safely preserved on my SD card, which I assume is unaffected by the ruckus.