What does a nandroid actually backup?

[TambourineMan]

What does a nandroid actually backup?

I am using Amon Ra 2.3

There are options to add recovery, sd-ext, wimax etc.

Does it back up Amon Ra if I select recovery?

Does it back up radios?

Does it back up HBoots/bootloaders?

 

[EarlyMon]

It won't back up your bootloader, but it will back up your Amon Ra recovery (lives in your bootloader partition), as well as wimax keys.

 

[TambourineMan]

Thanks. What about the radio?

 

[EarlyMon]

It may depend on the phone, but I don't _think_ so.

Typically, the radio firmware is in a separate partition(s) and I don't believe that those are accessible other than via fastboot - I'm not 100% on that, however, but pretty sure.

FWIW, I usually find the radio firmware on a good dev site, such as XDA, and make sure I have my own copies for whatever's current available to me, and I try to keep track if a radio matches a certain rom / Android revision level, as that has been a common requirement for my phones.

 

[TambourineMan]

Thanks.

I have an EVO 4G.

The reason why I was asking is that I've read that the majority of times/ways in which a phone gets bricked is when flashing the radio.

I was wondering if a nandroid was a way to increase the ways to unbrick it if the problem was due to a bad radio flash. But I guess when it's bricked you can't even get into recovery to flash the nandroid.

 

[sdrawkcab25]

Thanks.

I have an EVO 4G.

The reason why I was asking is that I've read that the majority of times/ways in which a phone gets bricked is when flashing the radio.

I was wondering if a nandroid was a way to increase the ways to unbrick it if the problem was due to a bad radio flash. But I guess when it's bricked you can't even get into recovery to flash the nandroid.

Yeah, if you have a true brick, your phone isn't even going to turn on... it becomes as useful as a brick for making phone calls.

 

[Granite1]

If you have a bad radio flash it sometimes can be recovered with an ruu (rom update utility) most times not.
If you try to restore a nandroid on the OG EVO to fix a bad radio flash it won't help. The EVO nandroids do not include any radios save for the WiMAX keys (4G).
There is a thread in the root sticky, Evo 4G All Things Root forum, that can sometimes un-brick certain phones. Works sometimes, sometimes not. I would link a few good threads for you to check out, but I'm on my phone, my apologies.