[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] Hobbles105:
Hey guys,

I am a total noob at all this rooting stuff. I have had my S3 for several years now and am still pretty happy with it, but I like technical work and decided to get the most out of my phone. I have been trying to figure some things out and have read alot of posts but still a little hazy. The best way to avoid hours of fixing something you broke out of ignorance? Double check with the pros.

Android version 4.3

So here is what I have done so far: I made a samsung smart switch backup of my phone then followed this posts instructions http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=2793071 . Worked great. I am all rooted, I have superSU installed. Everything went fine. because it sounded like a good utility I downloaded ROM manager from the playstore (from this post's recommendation http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=2135588 . I set up and ran the clockwork recovery app, it did a weird boot and screen and proceeded to run a backup. I cannot find that backup file but it says it made one and when i tired its remote backup download server (which is only for premium users) it showed a backup even through I could not download it. Then I downloaded titanium backup * root from the playstore and I had it backup system and user apps. After failing to find my titanium back up (it made 306 backups? ok......) I created a new folder in my SD card and routed the backups there. I open that folder and found a ton of files with GZ extension. I copied that whole folder (1.4gb) onto my computer.

That is what I have do to this point. I want to use the Cryogen ROM so I went to their site and found my phone model (https://wiki.cyanogenmod.org/w/D2tmo_Info). That page has a big warning about incompatible ICS Bootloader and tells me to update my firmware. I would be fine with running slightly older version of Cryogen, pre 10.1 but A) security concerns and B) I dont think what they have posted are the stable releases and C) no recovery (i have no idea what that is supposed to do,. recover what?) At that point I stopped and did some research but came away not at all enlightened. A lot of posts talk about other utilities such as adb, Odin, and so on but I am clueless. If I haven't mentioned a program or an action assume I dont have it or have not done it.

Also, http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=2135588 mentions booting into recovery mode and making two backups (one to each sd card and phone) I want to be as safe as possible but all these backups are eating up alot of space. Do they all need to be stored on my phone at all times? Which ones can I copy to my computer for storage and delete from my phone?

Things I want to do:

--create good backups

--transfer as many backups as possible to my computer

-- install Cryogen ROM

What are the next few steps?

My current thinking is to boot into recovery mode and create backups as specified in the noobs guide. Transfer those backups to my computer. Then use ROM manager to install cryogen v12.1. (firmware update? need? how?). I am not taking any further action until I hear back from this thread, but I just wanted to explain my current plan of action which is probably incorrect.

I really appreciate any help you fine folks can give.

Edit: after doing all the titanium backups stuff i talked about I returned to home page... my background has changed. WTH?

Edit2: I went ahead and ran two backups in clockwork recovery mode, one to sdcard and one to sdcard1 ( I assume to phone card and external card). I found a bunch of files in the SD card's clockwork file. My device and card are running low on space, I need to get the backups onto my comp. Holding off until I find out if I need to keep a backup on the device at all times.

Edit 3: I keep getting a pop up that says t-mobile account app has stopped working.