[Galaxy Note II Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] kaibosh99:
Okay, after crushing up my heart pills and sprinkling them into my open eyeballs, surviving several strokes, and having a stiff drink... I have a very 'hot tip' for everyone who plans to use nandroid as a backup/restore system. I have rooted my phone, then installed TWRP as a custom recovery system, and then made a full nandroid backup. After that I grabbed the newest ProBam rom and went through the steps of installing it, all rather easy once I had read seven billion threads on the various subjects.

Once I had ProBam setup 'just so' with all sorts of tweaks, mods, kernels, doo-dads, gadgets, etc, I did another full nandroid backup. Then I did something that was a BIG MISTAKE.

"Hey, these backup files are sure buried in a bunch of gibberish directories, I know how to fix that!" And so I moved the directories over to my pc, and got rid of all those pesky nested directories. After tucking the backups away I patted myself on the back, and continued on with my pro level hax0ring of my phone.

Of course, the inevitable happened. A new version of ProBam came out, and the download wasn't quite compatible with my phone (I am running a Telus SGH-I317M, aka N7105, so I run AT&T version of whatever I use). Oh, no big deal, time to do a restore from my last backup. Copied the newest backup to my phone, onto the SD Card. Then I rebooted into the recovery console, where I merrily did a full wipe of everything from orbit.

Then I went to do a 'restore', and pointed TWRP to my SD Card. Nothing. No sign of anything. I was confused, poked around through various google searches and finally found the answer. The nandroid backups are in those nested directories FOR A REASON. The 'gibberish' that I snorted at was a serial number tied to my phone, and without that the TWRP recovery console CANNOT SEE THE BACKUP. Here is where the panic really started to creep up my spine, because I could no longer even access my phone through my pc. I made careful preparations to commit ritual hari-kari, so I cleaned my katana and muddled through the best way to fall onto the sword in a manner that would cleanly cause enough blood loss to ensure a swift and proper end to my suffering.

While puttering around getting a suicide note ready for my family, I had trouble finding a pen and wondered how many days it would take before someone kicked in the door and gagged from the stench of my flyblown corpse. It was then that I realized that I had excised the very first backup from my 'Note 2 Toolkit' but left the parent directories intact, when I saw this I fell to my knees sobbing and thanking Shiva or Superman or whoever might be listening. But that was just step one. I remembered that I had bought an OTG USB cable, and came up with the brilliant idea of copying the backup (in the proper nested directory structure) onto a USB stick, and then plugging that into the phone. Yes, the TWRP console allows restoring or backing through the OTG system.

It worked, and I have put some slices of cucumbers on my eyes to bring the puffiness down as well as made an appointment to see a therapist to start dealing with the PTSD symptoms that will no doubt plague me in the coming years.

LONG STORY SHORT: LEAVE THE NANDROID DIRECTORIES JUST THE WAY THEY ARE