[XPERIA X8 General] stamatis:
After noticing that many members fear to change roms because they will lose their data i decided to make a guide about back up.

Backing up is a very important thing that will save you from so much trouble especially when you want to switch between roms. To make a long story sort it is a very useful tool for us xdacians :D

I will cover two factors. Firstly, back up of your entire rom with cwm recovery and second, back up of your apps.

Lets’s start with the rom back up.

Requirements

1. A rooted device.

2. Cwm recovery.​

We will make a Nandroid back up. The great thing about a Nandroid backup is that it saves everything about the system on your device. That includes your system data and more importantly, user data. All the apps you have installed, the user data individually saved by these applications, your phone contacts, the accounts tied to the device - every detail will be retained.

A point to note here is that your SD Card data is not backed up. The Nandroid backup itself is created on your SD card. Make sure you have sufficient space.

Instructions

1.	Reboot to cwm.

2.	Select “back up and restore”.

3.	Select “back up”.

4.	Wait patiently until its finished.

5.	Congrats you have successfully back up your rom.

6.	For more safety you can transfer it to your computer. You can find the folder at sd card/clockworkmod/backup.​

Now you can flash a different rom. If you don’t like it and you want to go back to your backed up rom here is how.

Instructions

1.	Reboot to recovery.

2.	Select “back up and restore”.

3.	Select “restore”. (You can choose “advanced restore” then choose the back up for more options, I think the options are pretty self explained…)

4.	Select your back up, it will have a name based on the date you made it.

5.	Wait patiently until its finished.

6.	Congrats you have successfully restored a back up.​

If you have bootloop after restoring a back up see post #2

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Ok, that was useful for when you install a rom and then you decide that the previous was better so you want to switch back but what if you want to keep the new one?

Don’t worry you can restore your apps there too, there is no need to install them all from the start.

Titanium backup is the solution.

Lets proceed with the back up of your apps.

Requirements

1. A rooted device.

2. Titanium backup.​

This is a very helpful tool to back up your apps and the user data(game’s progress for example), which make the difference from just installing your desired apps from the start.

A quick way to make back ups with this app is the following.

Instructions

1.	Open the app with root rights.

2.	Hit the tab on the screen which tells “Backup/Restore”.

3.	Now you see all your apps, including your system apps.

4.	Tap on one and a window will pop out, hit the “backup!” , as you can see there are other useful options as well.

5.	You can do this for every app you want to back up but it is time consuming, don’t worry if you have a large list of apps, hit the menu button of your phone, now select “batch”.

6.	You see many options. For a full back up of your app run the option “Backup all user apps”.

7. Done!​

For a more detailed look on the app see this from the developer’s site.

So, now you have flash a new rom and you want your apps.

Instructions

1.	Install titanium backup.

2.	Open it.

3.	Scrolling down the list of the “Backup/Restore” tab you can see all your back ups. You can either click on one and hit “restore” then ”App+Data” or you can go to “batch”, “Restore missing apps and data”.

4.	Done!​

For the system apps its better to restore data only.

Note that titanium backup is the app I prefer, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t other.

That’s it, you now have your apps from your previous roms. Enjoy your new rom.

Don’t forget to make backup often.