Questions about phone migration using rsync I'm planning to get a new android phone and I'm wondering what's considered best practice to move all data and settings. I know that lots of stuff goes to google, but I'd like to migrate app data as well. I know that I can do an rsync of the SD card and move things like pictures, but which directories should I move? Could anything bad happen from me just doing an rsync of the entire old card to the new one?

My old phone isn't rooted (yet) so I can't access /data, but if I did root it to grab that stuff, I'm not sure how I would feel about rooting the new phone - is there somewhere I could drop the files grabbed from /data on the  old phone to somewhere on the new one to get things to "just work"?

I'm migrating from Moto Droid 1 to 4
Using rsync to migrate your SD data would be fine...there shouldn't be any harm to copying the entire contents of /sdcard, but now would be a good time to clean it up. You can use rsync or just plain copy/paste, and migrate everything piecemeal either to your computer or directly to the new phone (just plug both in via USB to your computer at the same time).

The main concern is any pictures, music, etc. that you have on there. Beyond that, check for any app data you'd want. Some apps store their data in /sdcard/appname/, but most use /sdcard/Android/data/full.app.name instead (this is a little harder to decipher, as the names don't always match what the app displays as...Amazon's App Store is com.amazon.venezia, for example). Games may have saved games or high scores, games or other apps may have large data packs saved, and most apps back up their settings somewhere on /sdcard when you hit "back up settings" or "export settings" in a menu.

If you're wanting anything else, check out a similar question. The short answer is you probably need root to back up actual app data that isn't on the SD card, and an app that will do it for you (Titanium Backup is pretty much the de facto standard).