If you are the type that's interested in modding and tweaking your phone, you might have seen quite a few prompts to backup your phone's system partition in your lifetime. But it's perfectly possible that you overlooked the warnings and went ahead, either happily enjoying the result of your modding efforts in the best case scenario, or bricking your device in the worst. If you've never performed and kept an Android system partition backup ever, now is the perfect time to learn how to carry out this simple, but potentially sanity-saving procedure. The entry requirements are a little patience and a rooted device. If you are the phone customizer type, you've got both! Enable Airplane mode so you can work distraction-free, and proceed with the instructions.
Begin by grabbing Wanam's free Partitions Backup app from the Google Play store. Launch it and grant Superuser permissions to the app. You will be presented with a list of partitions and some buttons - this compromises PB's utterly simple interface.
Tap the Wrench icon to get some settings sorted out before proceeding. First, choose a place to store your backups - that is, choose whether it will be your device's internal memory, or external SD card storage. The second choice makes more sense if you have a big capacity microSD card inside, but it's up to you. The second option - Backup Formats - goes as follows. Choose tar for Samsung devices. Choose img if you will be restoring through Fastboot commands. Or choose tar.gz if you have any other smartphone and would like to keep a sufficiently well compressed copy of your partitions around.
Now that you are all set-up, press the back softkey to go back to the partition list, and choose which ones you want to backup. When you're done, press the circular blue Download button to begin the backup process. You have a chance to proceed or cancel, so take a deep breathe, and press Backup when you're ready to get done with this thing. The process could take a while, depending on how many partitions you'll be archiving, so be patient. There isn't much room for screw-ups, so worry not. When the process ends successfully, you'll get a toast notification and you'll be happy to know you've got a reliable backup in those critical moments when an experiment goes awry.
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Luis D. has a multitude of news, features and review articles written for PhoneArena. He adeptly demystifies complex technology topics, such as the development of advanced materials for bendable device displays and the evolution of chipset manufacturing.
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