[Moto X General] DogzOfWar:
This guide will allow you to back and restore app data from one phone to another without root. It does require, however, you to be tethered to a PC.

Tools:

If you have ADB up and running for your Moto X, you’re all set, and you can skip to the next section.

If you don’t have ADB running, install the fantastic “Motorola X Toolkit 1.2.1” found at: http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=2477132

You’ll also need the free version of Helium from the App Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.koushikdutta.backup&hl=en

Quick Background:

Ideally, you should be able to use Helium to backup and restore app data on your phone without needing root. However, according to Koush (author of Helium), “Motorola has implemented their backup process differently, and restoring doesn’t work”. Thus these steps are to help finish up the restoration process.

Old Device

1. On your other phone or device, install Helium

2. Find the app or apps that you want to back up and restore, and go through the backup process.

3. Back them up to your SD card

4. On my SDCard, I ended up with a folder called “carbon”, such as /sdcard/carbon, and then under there would be one folder per app that was backed up.

5. In my case, the game I cared about was Plants vs Zombies 2. When backed up, the folder would be called “com.ea.game.pvz2_na”, thus you’d have a folder like /sdcard/carbon/com.ea.game.pvz2_na

Preparing your PC

1. If you don’t have ADB up and running, install the Toolkit linked above.

2. Run the toolkit, and choose option #3 to install the Motorola drivers

3. Just to be safe, restart your computer. Why not, right?

Preparing your Moto X

1. Go into Settings, and then scroll down to Developer Options

2. Enable the Developer Options (a toggle at the top)

3. Enable USB Debugging

Plug in your Moto X

1. Windows should detect your Moto X and start installing Windows drivers for it.

2. On your phone, it will prompt you to accept an RSA key to allow you to “debug” your phone from your PC

3. You might have to toggle your Moto X and put it in Camera mode (not a Media device)

On your PC

1. In the apps that you backed up, find the .ab file. This is the Android backup file. For instance, for Plants vs Zombies, I had a 1.5 megabyte file called “com.ea.game.pvz2_na.ab”.

2. For each of these .ab files, copy them to the folder where Moto X Toolkit was installed. In my case, this was “C:\Program Files (x86)\stillthisguy\Moto X Toolkit”

3. Open a command prompt in Windows, and change your directory to “C:\Program Files (x86)\stillthisguy\Moto X Toolkit”. (You can use the command cd “C:\Program Files (x86)\stillthisguy\Moto X Toolkit” )

4. For each of your .ab files, run the command “ adb restore com.ea.game.pvz2_na.ab “. On your phone, you will have to click “Restore Data”

5. You should be all done!

Wait, what about Moto X Toolkit? Doesn’t it have an option to backup and restore?

Yes, but for me anyway, it looks like it depends on using root features, not Android’s native backup features, which is what Helium uses to create the backup, and what ADB uses to restore the app data.

Final notes:

Personally, I used to root all of my previous phones, but for this one, I haven’t felt the urge. Mostly I would root to backup and restore when I flashed custom ROMs, but for now, there’s no better phone than a stock Moto X with 4.4. These processes allowed me to restore the games I really cared about. It’s really a shame Helium can’t do all of this for us, because for other non-Motorola phones, Helium works great as a non-root backup solution.