I have been trying to get a copy of my notes on my Sony Xperia T for a while now. Looking at all the posts (of sometimes really desperate people) on the internet, this is clearly not as simple a task as one might expect it to be.

What I have discovered myself so far:

**Sony PC Companion**  

This is software from Sony itself. One of the things it can do is make a backup of the data on your phone, but for some reason this does not include the notes.
(It creates a .dbk file on your pc, which is simply a .zip file. I have renamed and opened it but could not find any notes)

**Location of notes on the phone**  

Based on this page: <http://wiki.cyanogenmod.org/w/Install_CM_for_mimmi> I have so far assumed the notes are located here:  

`/data/data/com.sonyericsson.notes/databases/notes.db`  

When I connect my phone to a Windows PC, I can access it with explorer. Then I find a folder called 'com.sonyericsson.notes' in the root (at the same level as the Android and DCIM folder), but it appears to be empty.

**Android SDK File Explorer**  

I connected my phone to a PC (used for app development with Phonegap) which has Android SDK installed and which has a File Explorer using ADB, but this way I also could not find the file.

**ADB shell**  

On the same PC I opened ms-dos and typed `adb shell`. This way I had a terminal connection with my phone. Unfortunately I could not use commands like `su` and `chmod` to change permissions on folders. But it was possible to do `cd /data/data/com.sonyericsson.notes/databases`, and the shell prompt changed to this path, but I could not do anything there.

**ES File Explorer File Manager**
I installed this app, hoping it would have some extra permissions, but alas.

Possible ways to go forward:

1. Root my mobile
2. Make the notes app sync it's data with Evernote

But years of IT experience makes my gut say: I really should make some kind of backup first before I try either of these.

So my question: how can I make a backup of my notes without doing something that can actually destroy them?