Did I back up my Android phone correctly (copied phone + card tocomputer)

The deed is done.
The phone has been backed up and reset to factory defaults.
Here is the procedure I wrote as I performed the reset task.
-----
Factory reset procedure Samsung Galaxy S3:
- Turn phone off
- Remove SIM card & external micro-sd card
- Press (a) Power (b) Volume up, and (c) Home
- When it vibrates, only let go of (a) Power
- When screen comes up, let go of all keys
- Use power key to select "Factory Reset"
.... reboot ...
[ ] Settings Accounts Backup and reset Collect diagnostics
Allow Diagnostics = unchecked
[ ] Create a new 50 GB Dropbox account for two years = no
[ ] Settings More Storage
Total Space = 16GB
System memory = 3.95GB
Used space = 171 MB
Cached data = 1.28MB
Miscellaneous files = 134MB
Available space = 11.75GB
[ ] Settings More Application Manager ALL [menukey] Sort by Size
S Voice 8.97MB (can't delete)
Samsung Books 8.46MB (can't delete)
Google Play Newsstand 8.13MB (can't delete)
ChatON 6.48MB (can't delete)
Google Play services 6.45MB (can't delete)
Drive 6.14MB (can't delete)
Google Search 5.81MB (can't delete)
Google+ 4.98MB (can't delete)
Hangouts 4.72MB (can't delete)
Maps 4.70MB (can't delete)
Google Play Books 4.57MB (can't delete)
Google Play Store 4.20MB (can't delete)
YouTube 4.00MB (can't delete)
Samsung Link 3.88MB (can't delete)
Google Play Music 3.71MB (can't delete)
Swype 3.67MB (can't delete)
Google Play Movies & TV 3.22MB (can't delete)
Visual Voicemail 3.12MB (can't delete)
Samsung Apps 3.11MB (can't delete)
Media Storage 2.55MB (can't delete)
Settings storage 2.54MB (can't delete)
Calendar Storage 2.37MB (can't delete)
Group Play 2.33MB (can't delete)
Gmail 2.32MB (can't delete)
Samsung Music 2.29MB (can't delete)
ConfigUpdater 2.21MB (can't delete)
Dropbox 2.18MB (can't delete)
Flipboard 2.09MB (can't delete)
Samsung Video 1.98MB (can't delete)
Google Text-to-speech Engine 1.83MB (can't delete)
Google Services Framework 1.77MB (can't delete)
Samsung Hub 1.76MB (can't delete)
Amazon 1.75MB (can't delete)
Samsung Print Service 1.68MB (can't delete)
Polaris Viewer 4.1 1.66MB (can't delete)
S Memo 1.57MB (can't delete)
...and on and on and on...
[ ] Turn phone off and insert SIM card
- All my contacts were preserved (in duplicate & triplicate)
- Contacts menukey Import/Export Export to USB Storage
Confirm export to /storage/emulated/9/Contacts.vcf?
[ ] Mount phone via USB to laptop
Alarms
Android
Application
DCIM
Documents
Download
Movies
Music
Nearby
Notifications
Pictures
Playlists
Podcasts
Ringtones
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

James P. Doolittle wrote, on Sat, 22 Nov 2014 23:46:43 +0000:

- All my contacts were preserved (in duplicate & triplicate)
- Contacts menukey Import/Export Export to USB Storage
Confirm export to /storage/emulated/9/Contacts.vcf?

Somehow all my contacts were on the SIM card, but they were
there in duplicate and triplicate (probably from reading in
contacts.vcf files over the years).

Given this brand new text file called "Contacts.vcf", is
there an *easy* way to strip out the duplicates?

James P. Doolittle wrote, on Sat, 22 Nov 2014 23:46:43 +0000:

The deed is done.
The phone has been backed up and reset to factory defaults.

After the factory reset, I created a new Google Play bogus
account using the following procedure.

Find an unused google name using Firefox on your desktop/laptop PC
http://mail.google.com uncheck stay signed in create an account

Enter in any first & last name, and then try to get an account.
Once you find an unused account name, stop (do not create it there!)

Go back to the phone with that new unused account name in mind:
Write down the desired password (8+ characters, spaces are ok)

Phone Desktop Play Store New login/password
Set up recovery options not now
Join Google+ not now
Use your Google Account to back up your apps, etc uncheck
Keep me up to date with news and offers uncheck
I accept (type in the captcha) Saving account...
Set up credit card not now

Now Google Play is initialized on the phone, with a bogus account,
which you will never need the password for ever again (it's still
probably a good idea to write it down).

James P. Doolittle wrote:
Paul wrote, on Sat, 22 Nov 2014 01:53:33 -0500:

If you still want to test with WinXP, try running
Windows Media Player and looking for an update option.

Hi Paul,
I finally got Kies3 running on Windows by moving to another computer.
http://i57.tinypic.com/3462ff6.jpg

Looking at all that stuff, clearly it backs up some things that I
haven't yet figured out how to back up manually.
http://i57.tinypic.com/2n86i4x.jpg

But, so far, it has been flaky, as evidenced by the fact that when
my PC tried to go to sleep, Kies prevented that (which is fine),
but then Kies refused to work thereafter, and I had to reboot
just to get Kies to start up again (even after killing Kies in
control-alt-del style).

Also, while it backed up just my contacts in seconds:
http://i61.tinypic.com/30cahdg.gif
It did *not* create a VCard file, which is what I had expected.
It created some kind of binary file, which may or may not be
portable across cellphones once I burn it to DVD for archival.

So, the method I already spoke about for archiving contacts
as VCARD files is probably far better than what Kies does for
contacts.

I was shocked by what happened though, when I moved the checkbox
from contacts to s-memo. Who would have thought *that* simple
change would cause Kies3 to check things for almost 45 minutes!
http://i62.tinypic.com/k0hxr8.jpg

Since I already outlined a way to manually archive all your
s-memos in a minute or two as PDFs or JPEGs, it seems counter
productive to try to archive them using Kies3, just to take
over 45 minutes to end up with a proprietary database which
is very likely to be useless to you as an archival on DVD or
USB terabyte drive.

So, my tentative assessment of Kies3, on Windows, so far is:

1. Use it for anything that you can't figure out how to back
up manually, as it does seem to back up things that we have
not yet figured out how to back up manually!

2. Do NOT use it for anything that you already know how to back
up manually, because (a) it seems to put it in a proprietary
format (need to double check that assumption), and (b) it
is dog-ass slow compared to the manual backup, and (c) it's
flaky as hell (but that might just be Windows acting up).

Disclaimer: That's only after a few hours of using Kies3, so,
my opinion will certainly change, as I figure out what it can
do (and what it can't do).



If it's not VCard, it could be sqlite3.

I got an sqlite3.exe from here, for Windows. And used the
DUMP option, to see what was in it. I first started using
that program, to peer into Firefox files. Firefox has
sqlite code in it.

http://sqlite.org/cli.html

*******

You can use the Unix "file" command, to examine files
and determine their actual type. The "file" command should
be immediately available in Linux. For Windows, you
can use this port. There are some issues getting this
running, but it's still a worthwhile download if
you're sitting in Windows and have absolutely no
clue what the file type of something is.

http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/file.htm

In this case, for a one-off, just boot Linux and do
the following. Linux is more likely to have an up-to-date
"magic" file, and so give a higher quality result. The
gnuwin32 one, there's no mechanism to get a new "magic".

file my_unknown_file.bin

That's faster than fiddling with the Windows version.

I usually install the gnuwin32 stuff by hand, and the file.exe
one is interesting, in that it expects the bin and lib
to be in the right positions with respect to one another.
That is done, so the file.exe program can find the "magic" file,
which is how it decodes stuff. It's not good enough to just
dump the "magic" file, next to "file.exe".

More history on the "File command" can be found here.
Apparently a version of the program has existed since 1987.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_(command)

It's a bizarre program, in that it has a hundred different
descriptors for text files. If you're writing scripts using
the output, that makes processing the information the
program gives, a bit interesting.

HTH,
Paul

On 22/11/2014 04:23, James P. Doolittle wrote:
James P. Doolittle wrote, on Sat, 22 Nov 2014 03:20:56 +0000:

I'll let that sync sit overnight, but, may I ask what it is doing?

Wow. That Google Sync is still in progress.
I started it a few hours ago, and it still says "cancel sync" at
the bottom. There is no progress bar. There is absolutely no indication
whether it's working or not, or when it might be done.

It's not a well-honed interface, by any stretch of the imagination,
but, I'll let it sit overnight.


If "Backup my data" is on it will have been backing up more or less
continuously as you used the phone.

Then when you log a phone that's been wiped clean in to that same
account the data will be restored to that phone.
(It's not absolutely everything, for instance apps will be downloaded
again from the Play store but their data will mostly be gone so most
apps will need to be set up again)

--

Brian Gregory (in the UK).
To email me please remove all the letter vee from my email address.

On 22 Nov 2014 20:02:54 GMT, Frank Slootweg wrote:

James P. Doolittle wrote:
[...]
So, Kies3 is good stuff - but - my impression is that it
makes a (nearly) useless archive, but a good temporary
backup.

This, in a nutshell, describes your confusion:

You *ask* for *backup*, but you *want* to *archive* stuff.

I guess an archive is simply a backup that you keep longer.


--

Char Jackson

Char Jackson wrote, on Sat, 22 Nov 2014 23:12:02 -0600:

I guess an archive is simply a backup that you keep longer.

That's a good point, in that the distinction, as I see it, is
that the content is different between the two, and that the
file format matters greatly in an archive.

In a backup, one would, for example...
a. Back up their program binaries & data (to any short-term format),
b. Reset their device to factory levels,
c. Immediately re-image their program binaries & data (from that backup).

In an archive, one would, for example...
a. Back up their data (to a long-term format),
b. Wait months, years, or even decades,
c. Re-use their data, almost always on a different platform.

It's all about content and format (as I see it).

In the case of the backup, the content of the backup is not
only different, but the format matters less. It's fine, for
example, if the format is proprietary and platform dependent.

However, for an archive, the content is different (in general,
one doesn't archive program binaries because they will almost
certainly be useless years from now), and the format of the
data is different (in general, long-term formats would be
preferred, such as JPEG, PDF, TEXT, OFFICE, HTML/XML, etc.

On Sun, 23 Nov 2014 10:51:18 +0000 (UTC), "James P. Doolittle"
wrote:

Char Jackson wrote, on Sat, 22 Nov 2014 23:12:02 -0600:

I guess an archive is simply a backup that you keep longer.

That's a good point, in that the distinction, as I see it, is
that the content is different between the two, and that the
file format matters greatly in an archive.

For me, a backup and an archive start out exactly the same, using the exact
same tools and resulting in the exact same content and file formats, etc.

I don't back up files and folders, I back up drive volumes. If I delete one
of those backups after a month or two, it was simply a backup. If I
intentionally keep it for a year or more, it's probably an archive. If I
kept it for a year only because I forgot to delete it, it's still probably a
backup.


In a backup, one would, for example...
a. Back up their program binaries & data (to any short-term format),
b. Reset their device to factory levels,
c. Immediately re-image their program binaries & data (from that backup).

I realize you're only providing an example, but you've picked an edge case
there. It's extremely rare for someone to do steps b and c above, even if
you only intended that example to apply in the Android group. (I'm posting
from the crossposted Windows group so my perspective may be different.)
Besides, what is a "short-term format"?


In an archive, one would, for example...
a. Back up their data (to a long-term format),
b. Wait months, years, or even decades,
c. Re-use their data, almost always on a different platform.

I note that both of your examples start out identically, if I overlook the
ambiguous "short-term" versus "long-term" format piece. Either way, you're
starting with a backup, which was entirely my point.


It's all about content and format (as I see it).

In my world, the two start out exactly the same.

--

Char Jackson

Char Jackson wrote, on Sun, 23 Nov 2014 11:36:45 -0600:

For me, a backup and an archive start out exactly the same, using the exact
same tools and resulting in the exact same content and file formats, etc.

At this point, we're waxing philosophically, so, neither of us is right
nor wrong. We both pretty much consider a "backup" in a short-term
light, versus an archive as being in a longer-term context.

What's different in our interpretations is how the content and format
may differ (or remain the same).

If I ... keep [a backup] for a year or more, it's probably an archive.

I understand your point that a recent "copy" is a backup, while
an old copy is an "archive", but, all I'm saying is that archives
are less likely to be usable if the file formats aren't taken into
account.

For example, an audio file saved twenty years ago on a Macintosh PC
is likely still usable today if it was backed up as an MP3 file, but,
if it was still enmeshed inside a Macintosh application, it's likely
not easily re-usable.

So, it behooves us to *not* back things up in proprietary binary
formats if we wish to use them years from now.

Besides, what is a "short-term format"?

A short-term format, for that example, would have been whatever
binary format any particular backup program uses. For example,
the suggested backup application was Kies3, from Samsung.

It apparently backed up contacts into a binary format.
If I was going to use that backup within, say, a year of making
it, then that (presumably proprietary) binary format wouldn't be
a problem, because we can assume Kies3 will still be available to
me a year from now.

However, it's a more risky assumption that Kies3 will be available
to me ten years from now, so, that (short term) binary format
will start to be less and less readable, over time.

However, if I saved that contact list into a text VCARD format,
it's tremendously more likely that this non-proprietary format
will be available to whatever program I'm using, years from now.

There aren't too many non-proprietary formats that work across
platforms, but, good contenders would be open standards (e.g., PNG),
closed standards (e.g., PDF), and text-based formats (e.g., xml).

In summary, for a backup (which is intended for short-term
preservation), it's permissible to save in proprietary formats;
but for an archive (which is intended for longer term storage),
the data has to be less proprietary and more open and re-usable
using a *different* program than that which was used to make
the original archive.

Char Jackson wrote:
[...]
In my world, the two start out exactly the same.

That's because you're not archiving, you just keep some stuff for some
time.

File formats and storage media and their readers (hardware and
software) often last less than a decade, so if stuff is really important
(i.e. worth archiving, not just backing up) you should chose all the
required components very carefully and re-evaluate them periodically and
if need be convert.

Think data on media (magtape, WORM disks, (large) floppies, etc.,
etc., which can not longer be read (because the devices no longer
exist/work/can be used) let alone that the file formats and the data in
the files can be understood.

James P. Doolittle wrote:
I tested Kies3 on Windows for the past few hours and I have
one question about backing up the existing applications.

The nice thing about Kies3 on Windows is that it allows us
to select which applications we want backed up:
http://i57.tinypic.com/a2f2g8.png

Then, Kies3 on Windows creates an "apk" file for each app:
http://i59.tinypic.com/fun7li.gif

One question.

If I save these APK files to storage media for a few years,
and then I want to reinstall the app on another phone, how
does one do that?

See the response(s) of Iain in the thread "apk file
for f-droid" (of today) for the answer to this.

[Saves me the composition/typing! :-)]

Frank Slootweg wrote, on Sun, 23 Nov 2014 21:19:14 +0000:

See the response(s) of Iain in the thread "apk file
for f-droid" (of today) for the answer to this.

Thanks.
The answer turned out to be as simple as trying to open the file,
which brought up the android menu to install it, if the settings
allowed that.

On Sun, 23 Nov 2014 11:36:45 -0600, Char Jackson wrote:

Besides, what is a "short-term format"?

Etch-a-sketch.

--
Gene E. Bloch (Stumbling Bloch)

James P. Doolittle wrote, on Sun, 23 Nov 2014 22:02:19 +0000:

The answer turned out to be as simple as trying to open the file,
which brought up the android menu to install it, if the settings allowed
that.

Thanks to the suggestion of Fritz Wuehler, who said that
Another answer would be the fact we can install the developer kit's
"adb" tool on our desktops.

Then we just type "adb install my.apk" on our desktop machines.
We add a "-s" option when we want to install straight to SD card.
It will do the upload and install all in one go.

I wish I had saved the original apk download of inSSIDer, because it's no
longer freeware, but, it *was* freeware when I had last installed it.

Since I had backed up my apps with Kies3 on Windows just yesterday, I
tried to open the 1,505KB "net.metageek-1.apk" which Kies3 in Android,
but, Android simply gave the error message:
"Describe error. There is a problem parsing the package".

In fact, *all* the apk files backed up by Kies3 on Windows gave that same
error when I copied them over to the Android "Downloads" directory and
tried to open them on Android.

So, going to Kies3 on Windows, I went to the Kies3 "Backup/Restore" tab,
and selected the entry titled "inSSIDer 1.47MB":
http://i60.tinypic.com/2igeywh.gif

This immediately elicited the warning: http://i57.tinypic.com/23k99q0.gif
"Instructions for restoring an application. The App Verification setting
for blocking the installation of malicious applications has been enabled
on your device. Disable the [Verify apps] setting in the [Settings] menu
before continuing."

Back on the Android phone, I went to "Settings More Security", and
unchecked the setting labeled "Verify apps. Block or warn before
installing apps that may cause harm."

I also noted that the Android setting was checked titled:
"Unknown sources. Allow installation of apps from sources other than the
Play Store."

Then, back on Windows Kies3, I hit the "Restore" button:
http://i62.tinypic.com/vwpp95.gif

Voila!
http://i58.tinypic.com/35k3nma.gif

The result was that the older (freeware) version of inSSIDer was,
thankfully, re-installed onto the Android device! Woo hoo!

I'm glad you guys talked me into using Kies3 as a backup solution.

Good news? Kies3 worked to restore the freeware inSSIDer version!
Bad news? Why didn't just clicking on the Kies3 apk file work?