Managing Smartphone Backups/Restoring Advice

[Sageofchaos]

Hello all,

I have a Xiaomi Redmi Note 8 and recently discovered that the Mi Suite from Xiaomi is actually useless with these devices since Android 6...

I'm planning on getting a newer phone soon (Probably an Android again).

My question is - Are there any reliable backup software/tools that I can make use of to transfer backups from my old phone to a newer phone?

I'd like something versatile where I may select which data to transfer to the new phone- Whatsapp, Telegram, e-mail, Contacts, Photos, Videos etc. without having to resort to a cloud solution. Ideally I'd like to keep everything on it dating back one whole year, and keep the rest on the cloud after I've backed it up with a tool.

I was browsing around online and it looks like Wondershare does all of this, but need some input on whether there are any other (maybe better?) free tools out there that can be recommended.

Thanks in advance!

 

[madness_inc]

wondershare is basically malware, avoid

 

[goldfritter]

- WhatsApp should be backing up to your Google Drive daily already
- Email (Gmail) and contacts should also already be synced with your Google account
- Videos and photos are pretty easy to do manually via your PC with a USB cable

Granted, this is more complex than an all-in-one solution, but it's free and isn't an enormous amount of effort.

 

[Sageofchaos]

The problem I am experiencing is that there is almost 30Gb of "System" files (?) in addition to the OS occupying some 14Gb of space on the phone. - It only has 64Gb onboard, so 20Gb is not much to work with in terms of pictures, videos, apps, games and so on. I guess it's just residual clutter from the years of use.

I've browsed a few "how to's" but none of them actually elaborated on how to get rid of said system files. What's weird is that this is true for the SD Card as well...

What I'd like to do is to backup what I need, do a factory reset of the phone to get rid of the residual clutter, then restore the stuff I need, evaluate the performance of the phone, and then decide whether its OK or need to upgrade.

I guess I'll just have to put in some effort and have patience... Navigating the phone's storage keeps on becoming unresponsive and is frustrating as hell. All Android based phones are like that when accessing it from Windows. I can't just "select all" and copy + paste in a directory either, because the phone is on, and some of those selected files are in use by the phone itself. So I get all kinds of strange error messages when I do this, and the copy procedure fails.

Its janky as fuck in general. The above error message popped up while copying pictures over, original folder had 319 pictures in it, copied folder has 286... And so it goes for each subsequent folder of each app.

 

[Sageofchaos]

I wonder if it's any better on Linux based OS's?

I might just do that.

 

[goldfritter]

I wonder if it's any better on Linux based OS's?

I might just do that.

Ja it's kak on Windows. No idea if it's better on Linux but might be worth a try.

For what it's worth, for the SD card, if you remove the card from the phone and use it in a USB adapter, it works a lot better.

 

[madness_inc]

I used a windows based app with ADB support to browse and copy files off my phone rapidly, as the standard usb implementation is way too slow. Will share details shortly

 

[madness_inc]

The software is ADB Explorer, Get ADB Explorer from the Microsoft Store.
You'll need to install ADB as well (How to install ADB on Windows, macOS, and Linux), see the section "How to set up ADB on Microsoft Windows", then adjust the settings of ADB explorer to point to the directory ADB is in and it should work when you connect your phone over USB (enable developer options on your phone)

 

[SDangor]

If you moving/upgrading to a Samsung device you could you Samsung smart switch to help with transferring those things

 

[Sageofchaos]

@madness_inc I would not want to browse an Android phone any other way ever again.
Appreciate your help.

 

[madness_inc]

@madness_inc I would not want to browse an Android phone any other way ever again.
Appreciate your help.

I wish it didn't need that additional config step at setup, but yes, proper gamechanger, full USB3 speeds