In this blog post I will explain how you can create a full backup of your Android smartphone, even if you don’t have root access.
The first step is to activate the developer options in your system settings menu. To do that, locate the build number in your device info menu. This is usually located somewhere under Settings -> Device Info. Once you located it, you have to tap the build number seven times in order to unlock the developer features of your phone.
Once you unlocked the developer mode, there is a new menu in your settings called Developer Options. Find this menu and enable USB Debugging.
The next step is to install a tool called adb (Android Debug Bridge). It is part of the Android SDK (Software Developer Kit). The problem is that the current version as of the time of writing (1.0.32) is unusable due to a bug (see bug report). As soon as this bug is fixed, you can dowload the SDK Command Line Tools from the official download page or install a current version using Homebrew.
Update March 9th, 2017: Tested again with version 1.0.36 (Revision 0e9850346394-android), and the backup works. However, an app blocked the backup process. After uninstalling the app, the full backup was successful.
This starts a backup process including all apps (-all), APK archives (-apk) as well as the internal and external storage data (internal memory and SD cards, -shared). If you don’t need all of this data, you can skip the correspondent parameter.
After issuing the command, you will be asked to confirm the backup operation on your smartphone. You can enter a password to encrypt your backup, which I recommend. Note that the backup process can take a long time depending on how much data is persisted on your phone. The process should result in a large file called backup.ab which is stored in the current folder (if you did not navigate to another directory: in your user home folder). If you want the backup to be stored elsewhere, you can supply the parameters -f <path> specifiying the target file path.
If the file is empty or contains only 41 bytes (when using no password) or 549 bytes (when using password) then you have a buggy version installed and need to get an older version (see previous sections).
This entry was posted in Android and tagged adb, Android, Backup, root by dave. Bookmark the permalink.
what to I have to change?
You have to use version 1.0.31, just as I described in my post. The latest version does NOT work and will produce the 41 Bytes file.
1.0.31 is still buggy for me on MacOS.