5 Easy Ways to Back Up & Restore Android (All Brands Covered)
Last Updated on April 17, 2023 by Jack Robertson
Cats are evil.
I left my OnePlus 9 Pro on my precious banana-shaped couch last Friday before I went to bed. The next morning, I found both my precious data and the couch piss-damaged.
Yes, my OnePlus 9 Pro was soaking in cat piss overnight. I really wish I had made an Android backup and I could restore it to the new phone, so I wouldn’t lose some of my contacts, SMS, and photos since I haven’t backed them up every day. I just got a OnePlus 10 today. Well, lesson learned. The first thing I do is to restore the old backup to my new phone. And I will start backing up my data every night before I sleep.
For those who are using an Android or Samsung phone, check the methods below and you will learn the skills that I use to back up and restore my Android phone!
Android Backup & Restore:
- Method 1: Back Up & Restore your Android via the Default Backup Service
- Method 1: Back Up & Restore your Android with a professional Backup Program
- Method 1: Back Up & Restore your Android with Google Backup
- Method 1: Back Up & Restore your Android with Google Drive
- Method 1: Back Up & Restore your Android with the Android File Manager
Method 1: Back Up & Restore your Android Phone via the Default Backup Service
Every phone brand provides users with their cloud backup services, like Apple’s iCloud, OnePlus’s One Drive, Samsung’s Samsung Cloud, Xiaomi’s Mi Cloud, etc.
Steps to Back Up your Android Phone:
Step 1 Locate the Android Backup service on your phone
Go to the Settings app. There, log in to your account. After the login, find Backup, Cloud, or Data & Backup on the Settings list.
Step 2 Enable the cloud backup service on your Android
Take my OnePlus 10 as an example, tap on Cloud Servoce - Cloud Backup -Auto backup. Then, decide which types of data I want it to back up on my Android. I’ve ticked Photos, Notes, Contacts.
Different services support different data types, before you start, if you have time, go to Reddit or Quora and see how others think about that Backup service.
Steps to Restore data to your Android:
It’s pretty easy to restore data from the default backup service, simply go to the same access and find the option of Restore data.
Method 2:Back Up & Restore your Android with a professional Backup Program
Apparently, the OnePlus Drive is not enough, it backs up only a few data types. I have more, like the documents from all apps. So, I found the echoshare Android Data Backup & Restore.
This is a pretty handy backup program for all Android users, with it, you can easily back up all your WhatsApp data along with a dozen of other data, like photos, SMS, Contacts, Notes, Documents, etc.
Unlike other services that conduct an unclear backup, this program ensures you decide the exact data for the backup. Besides, it offers an Encrypt feature that lets set a password for your backup file. In this case, whoever is using this computer, you're the only one that is avaialble to find and access your Android backup!
Now, download it on your computer and we can start to back up your Android data right away.
Steps to Back Up Android with a professional Backup Program
Step 1 Connect your Android to the program
On your computer, launch the program and choose Android Data Backup & Restore. Connect your Android phone to the computer via a USB cable.
Step 2 Back Up your Android
Once connected, you can start to back up the Android right away. Simply click the One-click Backup option and choose a folder on the PC to save all the data.
Or click the Device Data Backup and choose the types of data you want to back up. Tick the Encrypted Backup option and set a password to secure your backup. Click Next to complete.
Steps to Restore Data to Android from the Backup File
When you want to restore data from the backup files made by echoshare, easy. Follow these:
Connect your Android to the computer, and launch the program, choose Android Data Backup & Restore.
Hit the Onc-click Restore to recover the whole backup file. For selective restore, click the Device Data Restore option and select the exact data you need to transfer back to the Android.
Method 3: Back Up & Restore your Android Phone with Google One
I also tried Google One. Same as the default OnePlus backup, It can do auto-backup, however, when it comes to restoring data, trouble comes: you have to reset your Android phone before restoring any data from the Google One.
That’s fine if you just get a new phone. But if you accidentally delete one file and plan to get it back, well, resetting your phone seems too complex.
I managed to find a tool to get rid of that. Continue reading, I will tell you how to back up with Google and how to restore data from the Google backup without factory reset.
Steps to Back Up Android to Google
Step 1 On your Android phone, go to Settings, and find Google. Log in to your Google account.
Step 2 Choose to Turn on Google One when it asks you to back up your Android phone. Then, make sure the Backup by Google One option is on.
Step 3 To back up your Android now, simply tap the button Back Up Now below.
Option 1: Restore Data from Google Backup Directly
On your new phone or factory setting phone, go to Settings and log in to your Google account. Then it will prompt you to choose a backup to restore to this phone. Tap Restore to finish.
Option 2: Restore Data from Google Backup without reset/factory settings
You can’t really reset your phone just because you want to recover a deleted file. If the data is truly important, try using the echoshare Android Data Recovery to extract data from the Google backup without reset.
This is a perfect data manager for Android phones, with it, you can scan the data from your Google backup, preview, select and extract them with easy operation. Do you need any skills or knowledge? Absolutely not, click a few buttons and wait a while, then, you will have the data perfectly restored to your Android phone!
Now, download it, and let’s start to restore your Android data without reset.
Step 1 Sync your Android phone to Android Data Recovery
On your computer, launch the program. Connect your Android to the computer. On the program, choose to Recover Google Drive Data. Sign in to your Google account
Step 2 Access the Google drive data
. After that, the program will give you two options: Recover WhatsApp Data and Recover Device Data.
Option 1: Recover WhatsApp Data from Google Backup
Choose this option, UltData will display all the WhatsApp backup records, choose the one you need and click Download.
Next, verify your WhatsApp account by entering the verification code on the program.
Lastly, choose the data from this WhatsApp backup and click Recover.
Option 2: Recover Device Data from Google Backup
After choosing this, select the data types you want to restore on the next page. Click Start to proceed.
Next, UltData will list all the backup records for the data types you select, choose the one you need. Click View.
Now, choose the exact data you want from the selected data types, click Recover to complete.
All done. In this case, you don’t need to reset your Android phone or get a new phone to restore data from Google backup.
Method 4: Back Up & Restore Android Phone with Google Drive
Besides the Google backup, Google offers another backup option for both Android and iPhone users - Google Drive.
It shares the same cloud storage database with Google One, you can use this to back up your media files, like audio, video, document, photo. Pay attention that it can only save media files, others like Note, App data, SMS, contacts are not supported.
How to Back Up Android Phone with Google Drive
Step 1
Go to Play Store on your phone and search Google Drive, download and install it.
Step 2
Launch the app, sign in with your Google account. Next, tap on the Add button and tap Upload. Browse and select the files you want to back up to Google Drive.
When you select a file, your system may ask you whether you want to allow Google Drive to get storage access to this device, tap Always Allow.
Then, Google Drive will save the file to its cloud.
How to Restore Android Phone with Google Drive
Launch Google Drive, simply locate the file you need, tap on the three-dot button, choose to Download it. Next, you will find the file on the File Manager app of your Android phone.
Method 5: Back Up & Restore your Android Phone to PC via a USB Cable
If you only aim to back up photos and videos on your Android phone, there’s one easy way.
- Simply connect your Android to a computer via a USB cable.
- On your computer, launch This PC. There, on the panel, you will find an icon with your phone’s name on it.
- Open it, then, double-click the Internal Storage folder.
- From all these folders, find the DCIM and Movies folders. Open them and you will find all the photos and videos on your Android phone.
- Drag them to a new folder on your computer to save them.
FAQs
Samsung has its own cloud service, simply go to Settings and sign in with your Samsung accounts. Next, go to the Backup & Restore option. Tap the Back Up Data option to back up your Samsung right away.
Scroll down and you can decide the data types that you want them to be backed up. Tick them and exit the page.
Based on Google’s policy, if an Android phone is reset with the Google account registered, then this account will be in a 24-hour security lockdown. You will have to wait for 24 hours and then you’re able to sign it in on any Android.
Pay attention that once you try to sign in to the account any time within this 24 hours, the time of the lockdown will expand again to 24 hours since it will start after the last login attempt.