Custom Recovery and Nandroid backup for Android phone

[Note: Do it at your own risk. I will not be responsible if your data gets lost or your phone bricks.]

In a previous post, I showed how to root an Android phone. Rooting is the first step of taking control of your phone – becoming a power user. Now in this I am going to explain you the 2nd step which is also the penultimate step. We are going to install a custom recovery to take a backup of the phone data.

AmonRa Custom Recovery

Custom recovery helps to take a backup of the phone and do all the operations.According to a post in XDA forum, 'Recovery is image (binary data) stored in internal memory. This image contains something like "program" maybe better say "tool", which can boot-up independently on Android system. In other words, when this tool is running (booted up), than Android system is not. This tool is part of phone system, and in PC terminology recovery can by compared to BIOS with some added features like Backup/Restore, Wipe, etc.'

There are 2 famous custom recoveries which are available and most people use one of the two. The first one is ClockWorkMod and other one is AmonRa. ClockWorkMod is a GUI based app which can be downloaded from market. To use it, the phone must be rooted. There is free version and a paid version of this app. The free version obviously has limited functionality. This is a GUI based app so many first time users may prefer this but I read somewhere that it has some issues so I went for the second option. Download the AmonRa recovery. It is a zip file. You have to extract a file called recovery.img and place it in SD card. Now, download an app called Flash Image GUI. This app will ask from the recovery.img which you placed in the SD card. So provide the file and select flash. This app will install the recovery into the phone. 


Now boot into recovery – for this, switch off the phone and press ‘power + vol down + home button’ (LG P500)  to boot into recovery. Once you are into recovery, you will get the above image. You can see the build from the line which says ‘build:’. Here it is: RA-thunderg-3.0.6-GNM.

Nandroid Backup

Here you can see various tasks which can be done in the recovery mode. The important menu options which we are going to use is explained below:
1. Reboot system now – To restart the phone
2. Backup/Restore – To take the Nandroid backup of the phone. This is the option we are going to use. More explanation below.
3. Flash zip menu – To install a custom ROM or any other item from SD card.
4. Wipe – To clean the data from the phone.

We are going to take a Nandroid backup of the system. Nandroid backup is a very powerful backup which takes a snapshot of the current state of the system and freezes it in the SD card. i.e. takes the full backup of the system along with all the apps, data, everything.

Options for backup

The options which are available for selection when you do a Nandroid backup is shown in the image



Select all the options and press – Perform Backup. It will take up the backup and put it in the SD card. 

Backup 

Now if you have installed a custom ROM and want to revert back to current system, then just go a Nandroid restore to come back to the original settings.

In the next post in this series, I am going to explain on what is custom ROM and how to install one on your phone.

For more information on this topic, have a look at these links from XDA forums - 1. http://bit.ly/hHS4m1 and http://bit.ly/LyXMmX