[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] zettiness:
Hi all,

having a nightmare trying to restore 8 months of budgeting data which is essential for my tax return.

Have had my phone backed up with the built in Android backup and restore facility, which stores data on Google Drive (in fact, for the Expense Manager, there was also separate Dropbox backup that turns out stopped working at the beginning of the year without giving me any notification). Since I was getting exactly the same model phone (Xperia Z5 Compact), I expected an easy restore of the whole layout, settings, apps and their data.

Well, not quite so. Nothing was restored at all, so I had to start looking into it.

First, it seemed to have automatically made another backup, which didn't overwrite the old one and now if I was restoring, that's where the data would come from. So I deleted it, hoping it would turn to the other one. To my surprise, it would still restore from the new backup even though the file was not to be found on the Google Drive any more! Thought maybe it's cached but no -- it's not a local backup as if the phone is offline it wouldn't proceed.

When I check the backup section of Google Drive from browser on my PC or Android app, I can see a backup file that's dated 6th of August, which is the one that I need. With app, I can even "enter" the file and see all the apps that are backed up, including Expense Manager which has 1.4MB of data, last backuped on 3rd of August.

And yet there is no restoration from this backup and neither there is a way to download it from Google Drive to extract my data manually.

I have been going crazy with the support of Google Drive, who might have as well be bots, just more illogical. Xperia support couldn't help either, which is understandable as it's not really their issue -- I only hoped they would have an open line to Google with someone that do actually have some understanding of technical issues.

I have rebooted the device countless times, deleted app data and caches, removed my Google account and added again, reset the device to factory settings, but nothing is really helping. I have even tried downloading all my data from Google account but even there the backup doesn't show up! While I can clearly see it being there in my Drive, just no way of accessing it and it's driving me insane cause backtracking 8 months of budget is an awful task.

What are my options to get my data back? Can I make it work from the OS side? Or is there any way of reaching Google so that they let me download the backup file?

Device and Account Identifiers

Android ID: 3838949422650903204

System Software and Security Versions

OS Build Fingerprint: Sony/E5823/E5823:7.1.1/32.4.A.1.54/3761073091:user/release-keys OS Build Timestamp: 18 Aug 2017, 07:21:50 UTC Android SDK Version: 25 Google Services Framework/Google Play Services Version: 12874024 Security Patch Level: 2017-09-01 OTA Certificates: g/rNDKpGVbmOuEK8X1hvnf81/+Y=

Device and Account Identifiers

Android ID: 3954281811073848609

System Software and Security Versions

OS Build Fingerprint: Sony/E5823/E5823:7.1.1/32.4.A.1.54/3761073091:user/release-keys OS Build Timestamp: 18 Aug 2017, 07:21:50 UTC Android SDK Version: 25 Google Services Framework/Google Play Services Version: 12874024 Security Patch Level: 2017-09-01 OTA Certificates: g/rNDKpGVbmOuEK8X1hvnf81/+Y=