How to Backup Android
You’ve probably noticed that here at XDA, people tell you to backup your data, more often than anything else. But how exactly do you backup your data? Good question young explorer! When you see that someone recommends that you do a backup, you only have to backup the things you want to save. It’s not always necessary to do a full system backup. We will go over some different options, and you’ll be able to find one that works best for you.
Below are some of the possible methods that you can use to create a backup. Take a look at that them and choose what works the best for you.
Local Storage
Almost all of us own some kind of external storage. It can be either your Flash Drive, External SD Card, Personal Computer or you name it. 
You can copy the important data that you want to backup in it. It will be faster and easier in case you have a slow or expensive data pack. In case you use some kind of streaming service, check its settings. Most of them offer to move the data to the SD Card.
You can check the storage manager in your device’s settings to see how much space each kind of file is using. This will help you to get an estimate on how much space you will require to backup each kind of file. It even has an option to Free up space which is great.
You can export your contacts into SIM Cards or VCF file. You can copy important documents, media files into PC. Use your Social media apps like WhatsApp to backup your chats onto your Phone Storage and then copy them. Check your app settings to discover if it supports backing up your data. If yes, then do it.
Cloud Storage
With the rise of a number of cloud-based services, cloud storage is a thing. Cloud storage services allow you to store your data easily. All you need is a fast speed internet connection to get the best results. A lot of cloud storage services offers free storage services. Google Drive offers free 15 GB storage space which is integrated with Google Photos, Docs, and all other Google Products and Services. You can use the Google One program if you are ready to pay for more storage and want a family plan.
Dropbox offers 2 GB free storage space, while Mega offers a 50 GB storage space with encryption.
There are a lot of paid and free cloud storage services available over the market. Choose what’s works best for you carefully.
You can also check your app’s settings to see if they allow to backup your Android data on their own servers. Google offers to backup your Contacts, Games, Calendar and a lot of their services. Check it in settings. WhatsApp offers to backup directly into Google Drive and allows to restore during account restore. The best part is that it WhatsApp backups don’t count against your Google Drive’s quota.
Custom Recoveries
There are a lot of Custom Recovery projects available all over the web which will help you to backup your data. One of the very famous recovery projects is TWRP. Team Win Recovery Project (TWRP) allows you to backup and restore based on partitions. It creates an almost exact copy of the data present on the partitions. This makes it a go-to option for most users. A lot of other recovery projects are also based on TWRP and offers almost similar backup and restore features. You can check your device’s XDA forum to see if your device has a working port of TWRP or any other recovery project.
However, these backups usually exclude your data in Internal Storage for e.g. your cat videos or unicorn images. You must backup them separately. Backups can be renamed, encrypted and a lot of other options are available based on the project. This helps you to customize the backup as per your needs.
RedWolf and PitchBlack are some of the popular recovery projects based on TWRP. They offer a few extra features over TWRP. However, their supported device base is small compared to TWRP.
Backup Specific App
There are a lot of apps which are developed just for one purpose and i.e. Backup. Titanium Backup is one of the oldest and most powerful backup apps on Android. It has been a community favorite for backing up your android. Offering a lot of functions with both free and paid versions, it can backup your apps, games, and almost everything that is on Android. If you want a wiki for help, we got one at XDA. You can check our Wiki on Titanium Backup.
In case you want something more simple, you can check out Migrate. Migrate is a new app for backups which is developed to help you backup your data before switching ROMs. It’s simple and free. As its still in development, it might be missing a few features with some bugs not documented. You can report them to the developer if you encounter them on its XDA Thread.
![Migrate - custom ROM migration tool [4.0 GPE]](http://play-lh.googleusercontent.com/F4-87wWfW9LHbZFGzR1-FMq9kafJP24O-w_CjnycFsMP1Q3O_PSdbzQ3lcoLrYJ1DsE=s128)
Final Words
and that’s all from our side. All of the above methods should prove useful to you. However, you can never know if we missed something, Right? Don’t hesitate to ask help on your device’s XDA forum if you need one. You can also hop into our Social Groups on Discord, Telegram to ask for help. We will be glad to help you!.
