Database Users

ROM upgrade - how to backup?

Hi all,
I'm thinking about upgrading to latest ROM however it took me a while to make all my apps running (especially TomTom) so I'd like to avoid reinstall. Is there any proven method how/with what software backup data, upgrade and then restore data from backup?
Any comments appreciated.
Chris
PS: Forgot to mention: device is Imate Jasjar.

I've heard that SpriteSoftware advertizes that their backup can even be used for restoring data after a firmware upgrade.
I cannot confirm this as I am more than sceptic about it (I think it is not advisable to do so on a new firmware).
If you try just buy the Backup Software for WM5 !
What are your really important data you should backup ?
1. Internet Bookmarks
2. Contacts (the ones in your phone)
3. important SMS
You can re-install all programs again after an upgrade (though it's very annoying work).

I'd like to avoid 2 evenings lost for installing all the stuff.

I was just reading about this tonight on the Axim site.
Yes, Sprite will do backups that will restore after ROM upgrade, they even have an Upgrade Mode built into their software.
If I can remember the post I read you have to run a tool, copy a file to your SD card, back up, do the upgrade then copy the file back and restore your backup.
Here is the FAQ entry dealing with it, but the instructions are slightly different. You might want to check up on it yourself.

I tried this and it just didn't work. I have been in communication with Sprite for nearly a week now and I've got no where. If you got to the Sprtite Backup site and look in the Q&A/Forum, you should see all my correspondence.
https://spritesoftware.CRMdesk.com/thread.aspx?id=13884&auth=b7d51abe-56ce-42a3-8a03-68bba845e08b
Anyway, I spent hours yesterday doing a manual re-build. The plus side is that I've freed loads of memory after the (well several actually) hard resets.

Recommend a Reliable Backup Program Please

Hi Everyone,
Which Backup program do you use? Is there one you recommend? All this hacking my Cingular 8525 around has had me hard-reset at least twice within the last week. I need a good and reliable backup program since installing all of my software is taking me over 2.5 hours of time.
Thanks for responding.
ADP

spb backup has never let me down.well worth trying.
sprite also gets good reviews but I've never used it.

read http://www.pocketpcmag.com/blogs/index.php?blog=3&p=1270&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1

I've tried different backup programs with my TyTN.
I found that the only perfect working program is SPB Backup.
I've already restored my data after hard reset with this program (not once) and all is good.

i use spb also, works great

I vote for spb as well.
Although keep in mind that it only does back up system settings and core software installed in device (not sure what exactly), not the whole file system of your PDA. My problem was, I deleted some files and uninstalled some programs after backing up, and after restore they were not there! (just blank icons).
I would love to mirror my whole device on PC hard drive, yet I am not sure about software for this purpose.

how well does spb backup perform when you do a ROM upgrade?

MilanoRex said:
how well does spb backup perform when you do a ROM upgrade?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Whatever backup product you use, DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT applying a backup from a different ROM version. You're asking for serious trouble.
Simply put, if you update your ROM, you're also plan on reinstalling everything clean from scratch...

mnez said:
I vote for spb as well.
Although keep in mind that it only does back up system settings and core software installed in device (not sure what exactly), not the whole file system of your PDA. My problem was, I deleted some files and uninstalled some programs after backing up, and after restore they were not there! (just blank icons).
I would love to mirror my whole device on PC hard drive, yet I am not sure about software for this purpose.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Mobile Deployment
Deploy an identical policy based corporate image to all your mobile devices. From the original creators of the industry leading Symantec GhostTM cloning solution, Sprite Clone provides rapid and reliable deployment to multiple mobile devices thereby assuring consistency and cost effectiveness...
http://www.spritesoftware.com/sprite-clone

goestoeleven said:
Whatever backup product you use, DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT applying a backup from a different ROM version. You're asking for serious trouble.
Simply put, if you update your ROM, you're also plan on reinstalling everything clean from scratch...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sprite Backup works perfectly with ROM and DEVICE upgrades.. I switched from my Wizard to my Hermes without any problems..

MilanoRex said:
how well does spb backup perform when you do a ROM upgrade?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Use Sprite Backup in this case, it'll work unless you try to cross-restore between AKU2.x and AKU3.x. And please DO read my above-linked article; in there, I've also elaborated on this very question.

bobstarina said:
I found that the only perfect working program is SPB Backup.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Strange you had problems with the otehr alternates (Sunnysoft Backup, SKTools 3.0, Sprite 5.1). Are you sure you tried the LATEST versions of them? It's only lately that, for example, Sunnysoft Backup received REAL WM5 support.
Also please read the Backup Bible I've linked in above if you need more info on all these questions.

MilanoRex said:
Sprite Backup works perfectly with ROM and DEVICE upgrades.. I switched from my Wizard to my Hermes without any problems..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Both of you are correct. Sprite DOES work great in most cases, except for restoring AKU3 content under AKU2 and vice versa.

does restoreing after a ROM upgrade using Sprite also keep your current registry changes as well...or do i have to do all registry hacks all over again...or even after just a hard reset not a ROM upgrade do i still have to enter the reg. edits all over again....

Sprite works well for me

strikeIII said:
does restoreing after a ROM upgrade using Sprite also keep your current registry changes as well...or do i have to do all registry hacks all over again...or even after just a hard reset not a ROM upgrade do i still have to enter the reg. edits all over again....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It will restore your registry changes too. Otehrwise, it wouldn't work at all with a lot of third-party apps that also use the Registry to store their stuff / settings.

Does anyone know if Spb backup will back up outlook notes?

Sprite is the only one worth getting since you can restore after a ROM or device change Just make sure you RTFM before you go changing anything as there are things you need to do before hand

Interesting to hear that Sprite Backup works without problems for all of you. On my TyTN, when it wants to reboot before beginning a backup, the TyTN gets stuck at the Windows Mobile screen. Removing/re-inserting the battery usually allows the boot process to finish - but only until the next reboot. After that, all subsequent reboots show that behaviour, no matter if initiated by Sprite Backup or otherwise. And very strangley, after a day or two this phenomenon disappears slowly. A hard reset fixes the problem immediately - at least until I re-install Sprite Backup or restore an (executable) backup I made earlier.
What's even more strange is that this seems to be reproducable, even across different ROM versions. I saw that first with the O2 Germany ROM my Trion came with, and also after I updated to the south-african WWE ROM.
Cheers
Daniel

Restoring Sprite Backup after ROM upgrade

Hi all,
If I upgrade the ROM on my Orbit 2, can I use my latest Sprite Backup to restore my personal settings after upgrading?
If not, what settings will I need to manually replace:
e.g.
1) Contacts, appointments, etc. - via activesync
2) Copilot / Tomom - from original SD cards
3) Network settings - using "Connection Setup" program
4) ...
Am I missing anything? I'm worried that after upgrading the ROM I will spend days getting everything back to normal!

At first, you will spend an hour getting everything back to normal. Then, when you become addicted to flashing roms, you will master the "reload" and it will still take an hour (or close to it). I know with PIM backup (as indicated by the name "PIM"), you can only restore appts, sms, email, contacts, phone logs, tasks and the like. Not sure about Sprite but I'm sure you can't do much more...

timpharrison said:
Hi all,
If I upgrade the ROM on my Orbit 2, can I use my latest Sprite Backup to restore my personal settings after upgrading?
If not, what settings will I need to manually replace:
e.g.
1) Contacts, appointments, etc. - via activesync
2) Copilot / Tomom - from original SD cards
3) Network settings - using "Connection Setup" program
4) ...
Am I missing anything? I'm worried that after upgrading the ROM I will spend days getting everything back to normal!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The full last version of Sprite Backup (6.x) provide an "upgrade" mode that should allow a user to restore all his data after a ROM update (without touching the OS part). I never tested it as in my concern I spend less than one hour to fully reconfigure my Polaris after a ROM upgrade. But I'll be interested by all experience sharing with tools like Sprite Backup.
Please check directly to Sprite web site for more informations and welcome back with your findings that I'm sure, will interest more than myself

academic said:
The full last version of Sprite Backup (6.x) provide an "upgrade" mode that should allow a user to restore all his data after a ROM update (without touching the OS part). I never tested it as in my concern I spend less than one hour to fully reconfigure my Polaris after a ROM upgrade. But I'll be interested by all experience sharing with tools like Sprite Backup.
Please check directly to Sprite web site for more informations and welcome back with your findings that I'm sure, will interest more than myself
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have used it before on my Artemis and believe me, it's crap. Just an backup works fine but when you have switch to another rom, forget about it. Some apps work decent, most of then not. (80%) The only thin you can do to be sure you can go back after an Flash is to dump you're own rom.

It hangs on me
Sprite hangs on me when I want to restore Bepe 0.53 full backup after flashed back to 0.53 from 0.66. I am trying all the ROMs version to see what is best for me and so far 0.53 is what I called baseline for me. It took me only 2 hours to reconfig my device but the damm sw hangs and I waited much longer than that. When it finished, the device does not boot and I have to do a hard reset.
Sprite is crappy so does spb backup. I have not found anything works!

HaiLe512 said:
Sprite hangs on me when I want to restore Bepe 0.53 full backup after flashed back to 0.53 from 0.66. I am trying all the ROMs version to see what is best for me and so far 0.53 is what I called baseline for me. It took me only 2 hours to reconfig my device but the damm sw hangs and I waited much longer than that. When it finished, the device does not boot and I have to do a hard reset.
Sprite is crappy so does spb backup. I have not found anything works!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thats the point. All those back-up progams work well but now when you flash your rom. You really need a dump of your rom to get back to original. For the rest, SPB, Sprite And whatever back-up apps work all well if you just want to play around with apps and return if you don't like them.

SPB BackUp +100,000, Sprite Backup -100,000

So I decided to update my ROM.
http://www.htc.com/sea/SupportDownload.aspx?p_id=250&cat=2&dl_id=627
Have been using SPB Backup since day 1 I got my phone and have successfully used it few times to restore my data when some software corrupted another part of the phone. Finally I found out today from HTC's website after trying my phone's serial number several times under different countries that my ROM's will be from Singapore.
Got the ROM above (107.2) and saw few hotfixes as well. I already download the +SMS fix because a kind soul uploaded the cab file on xda.
So eager to have my TP2 show 288MB of RAM and the Yahoo stock update, I went to the download page. There I saw that I could also download Sprite backup tool recommended by HTC which was free for HTC Singapore users. Downloaded and Installed, did a backup and thought, great after my ROM upgrade is done, will restore the backup which will restore everything (themes, registry, menus, software etc).
Well WRONG. After the ROM update, ran Sprite back up. Gave me few options. Restore personal data, level 1, level 2 and level 3. Well I needed Level 3 to restore everything including registry since I had so much crap installed on my phone like TomTom and so many other software. Sprite back up failed miserably with a miserable error. "Cannot restore, error".
I was like 'oh shyte'. Lucky for me I take SPB Backup's before I install a software that I think might conflict or might give me problems afterwards. I had a 3rd august backup on my storage card and my laptop. Tried restoring that and VOILA, everything restored fine. Tomtom runs fine, all the software is still there, no registry errors so far, themes, menu layout etc.
Oh and after the restore I did check my ROM version again, it had changed back from 107.2 to 107.1 (the label has changed but the actual ROM is 107.2) but the hardware is still showing 288MB
So if you are keen to upgrade but think you are going to have to re-install everything from scratch after a ROM upgrade. SPB Backup is the answer. Best $$$ spent in my life.
ps - I don't think so if I will be this lucky when HTC provides free upgrade to Win Mobile 6.5 and try and restore a Win Mobile 6.1 backup on top of that. So word of caution.
Edit - I only tried Level 3 restore which apparently according to another user posted down the bottom reckons is the last resort option. Trying Level 1 would have restored fine which I never did try. So Sprite backup most prob works fine like SPB Backup.

powersquad said:
....Oh and after the restore I did check my ROM version again, it had changed back from 107.2 to 107.1 (the label has changed but the actual ROM is 107.2) but the hardware is still showing 288MB
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yup same here, I have updated my Europe ROM and after the sbp restore, it change back from 401.1 to 401.0. Still give me the 288MB.
btw, there is a registry entry that stored the ROM version which was overwrriten by SPB restore, you can be change back... at
HKLM/Software/OEM/ROMVersion to the correct version.

Should actually be:
SASHIMI\Manual setup +100,000, Setup using Backup Program -100,000 after ROM upgrade.
I'm not a fan of restoring all data after upgrading\flashing a ROM, as probably a lot on XDA don't. Other than that it's pretty subjective. I for one like Sprite Backup more than I do other (shareware) backup programs.
I use PIM Backup to create a backup every night at 04:00am.
Once a week Sprite Backup creates a complete backup at 01:00am. This way it's finished before PIM Backup starts again.
This is my personal setup, and it hasn't let me down for years now

I also flashed the rom update and restored my backup with sprite backup.
Worked like a charm because I used Merge level 1.
The help say,
Use level 1
In case of problem use level 2
Still problems use level 3
So I don't understand why you used level 3 and complane all the same.

deaad said:
I also flashed the rom update and restored my backup with sprite backup.
Worked like a charm because I used Merge level 1.
The help say,
Use level 1
In case of problem use level 2
Still problems use level 3
So I don't understand why you used level 3 and complane all the same.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I never tried Level 1 and Level 2. I thought Level 3 would have done the job. hmmm my bad.
Time to update the thread .

ROM Update problems

Hi there,
I just did the ROM upgrade on my phone from 1.48 to 1.66. After using SPB Backup to restore my files from 1.48, I had an issue with the restoration (HTC Sense refused to load) and had to hard reset. The restoration then worked fine, but I checked my ROM now and it's back to 1.48. Was it the hard reset I did after my failed restoration? Am I going to have to install the ROM update every time I want to hard reset my phone? This was my first upgrade, so be gentle!
Thanks,
David

if the rom version is reading anything but 1.66 then the flash failed. a hard reset will not change the installed rom. I would guess either the flash to 1.66 failed, our for some reason your backup software restored some system files that shouldn't have been backed up.
that's why I never back anything up(well except syncing contacts of course, and keeping my data on sd card)
always better to spend half hour re installing progs from scratch in my opinion.

Don't think the ROM upgrade failed - went through the whole thing without problems. Going to give it another go just now - will hard reset my phone and see what ROM details it gives me after.

The ROM version is stored in the registry in order for windows and windows apps to access it. This gets set when you install a new ROM, so that software doesn't have to query the ROM directly in order to get the version number.
I'm guessing that you use SPB Backup to backup your registry too?
If so, after your hard reset just check the version number before you do a restore, and then again after, and you should see the version change from 1.66 back to what it was previously.

restoring the system from an spb backup file will NOT change the rom version displayed in settings. SPB BAckup knows when the rom version is different and even tells you this when you restore your system from a backup that was created in a different rom version.

Audio Oblivion said:
restoring the system from an spb backup file will NOT change the rom version displayed in settings. SPB BAckup knows when the rom version is different and even tells you this when you restore your system from a backup that was created in a different rom version.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I guess there must be different versions of SPB backup floating round then, because I got this information from a thread a while ago where several people had this exact issue.
Guess we'll have to wait and see the outcome.

Haven't done the ROM update again, but just out of interest, I have SPB Backup 2.1.0, build 3536.

CloneboyZA said:
Haven't done the ROM update again, but just out of interest, I have SPB Backup 2.1.0, build 3536.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You shouldn't need a complete reflash to see if that's the problem. A hard reset will be enough. If it still says it's not 1.66, then definitely flash it again.

johncmolyneux said:
I guess there must be different versions of SPB backup floating round then
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
possibly...
i have version 2.10 build 3536 myself and use it ALL the time.
after a rom flash i run the exe that SPB Backup creates for a backup and go through the restore process. SPB BAckup checks the rom version on your device and if it is different it tells you so... you must then run the retore in "rom upgrade" mode. Your ROM version will NOT change.
Maybe it is the "rom upgrade" mode that CloneboyZA missed?

Audio Oblivion said:
possibly...
i have version 2.10 build 3536 myself and use it ALL the time.
after a rom flash i run the exe that SPB Backup creates for a backup and go through the restore process. SPB BAckup checks the rom version on your device and if it is different it tells you so... you must then run the retore in "rom upgrade" mode. Your ROM version will NOT change.
Maybe it is the "rom upgrade" mode that CloneboyZA missed?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Confirmed.

Well, SPB Backup wasn't picking up the ROM upgrade - had to put it into forced ROM upgrade mode. Did a hard reset, and just restored program files and PIM data - the ROM version is showing correctly now as 1.66. Think I'll do what was suggested - only restore PIM data, and reinstall everyhting one by one. Just frustrating to spend all that time doing it - what use is SPB backup then?

PS Also lost my Footprints that I created - any idea where they are stored so I can restore them ?