Looking for Android equivalent of Clonezilla / Diskimage / Ghost etc Have been googling for quite a few hours but can't seem to find what I'm looking for, hope someone can point me in the right direction....

I want to basically make a complete image of my phone before I make an changes to it so that I can restore it exactly as it is now. In the PC world I would use CloneZilla / ghost or similar. though I have used dd in the past and don't mind using it.

I am looking for a solution that will work on the following phones:


HTC Desire (not HD or S)
Sony Erikson X10 Mini Pro


In my searching I found mention of a tool called Nandroid, but as best as I could tell it seemed to only be for a G1 and required Root. I don't have root on either phone, so solutions offered requiring root are not helpful because (as I understand it) gaining root will wipe the data (at least some) I'm trying to back up.

I also found article about creating a GoldCard for a HTC Desire, is this what I need to do? there was no explanation on what a GoldCard was? It also didn't look like a particularly desirable method as It required wiping the memory card first and had no mention of how to restore if things go bad.

My objectives are as follows:


Upgrade the SE X10 mini (it's stuck on Android 1.6!) I know there is a 2.1 upgrade for it, but it's not available unless yo have a windows machine??? I only have Ubuntu + Mac. I'm not prepared to buy a windows licence just to upgrade an android phone (seems Odd!)
Try out Android 2.3 and 3.0 on the HTC Desire and the X10, understandably this is play, so I want to be able to go back quickly, especially on the X10 (wifes phone) as I will be in no end of trouble if I brick that and don't get it back by the morning :)
If successful with the first 2, then I can look at trying out dev releases and testing them (That is after all my day job) and hopefully being able to contribute. To do this I need to be able to load a release test it out and then roll back on the same night so Ideally I need a process that is quite quick or a bunch of shell commands I can script.


Hopefully someone can steer me on the right course....

Thanks,

Dave.
Root should not erase any phone data.  How do you expect to back up the entire device with only user permissions?  You need root permissions, in the absence of a system-level tool built into the OS or bootloader or a PC-side tool for directly accessing the phone storage (both are very unlikely).  Update: There is now OS-supported backup which an app like Helium can use to back things up without root.

ClockworkMod / Nandroid is definitely not G1-only, there are dozens if not hundreds of supported devices.  It's definitely the best way to back everything up.

I recommend checking out XDA's x10 Mini General forum and possibly the Android Development forum also; read all the sticky threads, they should give you a good overview of all this.  You can do the same for the Desire.