Whether you have a newer device or an older one, it never hurts to make a full backup of your data to keep it as safe as possible. We tell you how to make a full backup of your Android mobile
Our mobile phones have become much more than just a communication tool. This event influences when buying a new one, since many users look the most at its capacity or its camera before other more technical aspects. All of this means that the information we have stored in it is very important to us, since most of us store everything in it, from photographs to documents related to our work, including, of course, our agenda or our contact list. For this reason, we must always have a backup copy of our device, something that will save us from possible problems. In this article, we tell you how to make a full Backup of your Android device.
How to make a full Backup of your Android mobile
There are several ways to make a backup on an Android mobile phone, but the easiest will always be to make a full Backup of your Android. All Android mobile manufacturers have an option in their Settings menus to save a copy, and to access this option you just have to follow these steps:
- Access the Settings menu of your device
- Look inside for an option that includes “backup” (in the case of Samsung, “Accounts and backup).
- Within this menu, we will have several options. Select Back up data to Google Drive, the safest and most convenient way to restore this data later.
- Finally, click on Create a backup now.
There are third-party tools or other platforms that allow us to make backup copies, but we recommend that you do it with Google Drive whenever you can. In this way (and as you will see later in this text) you will have it very easy to take all that information to another device or even to the same one if you decide to format it.
How to back up your photos and videos
With what we have explained a little above, you should already know how to make a backup of your data on Android, but it may also happen that you want to do it with only one type of file. You likely want to do it, sooner or later, from your photos and videos, since what is in our galleries is usually irreplaceable most of the time.
As before, there are several different ways to make a backup copy of the images or videos that we have on our reel, although once again the most comfortable option comes from Google. The solution for this is to have the Google Photos app installed on our device, an application that is usually installed by default on all Android devices. If you have never configured it to save your photos and videos in the cloud, we will explain how to do it step by step:
Access the Google Photo application (install it previously if necessary).
- Click on the icon with your photo. You will find it in the upper right corner of the screen.
- In the drop-down that will appear, click on Activate backup.
- On the next screen, tap Turn on backup again.
Of course, if you do not want to use the cloud service offered by Google, you can also go to others without problems, although none will offer you, as we have said, the comfort and facilities that the Californian company does. You also have the option to connect your device via USB to your computer and transfer the images and videos manually, although the process is much more tedious.
How to make a backup of your documents and files
It’s time to talk about documents and files this time, something that will probably also occupy a significant part of your device’s storage. We can also save files such as PDFs or APKs by making a backup copy, although for them we will have to use another system. As with images, we can also use various cloud storage services, although once again the best option is to use Google Drive, a service that we can enjoy for free on any Android device.
This Google service has an application that is usually also installed on all Android devices, and to make a backup copy of our files we will have to do the following:
- Open the Google Drive app on your device.
- Click on the “+” button that you will see at the bottom right of the screen.
- In the dropdown that will appear, choose the Upload option.
- If we click on the three horizontal lines at the top left, we can choose the type of file or folder we want.
- Once we have found those documents or files that we want to “save” in the cloud, we simply have to click on them to upload them.
How to back up your apps and app data
If you are worried about not losing your applications or all the data in them, you also have the possibility of making a backup. You will never have any problem downloading and installing applications that you have already installed with your Google account on an Android device (whether free or paid), but depending on which application it is, we may have a problem, especially in those cases where we have installed it through an APK.
In this case, we don’t have a Google alternative that can be used to make a backup copy of the applications, so we have no choice but to go to a third-party app. We recommend that you use the Apps Backup Restore application, a very simple option to use and that will serve us wonderfully. Once you have it installed, you will only have to do the following to make a backup copy of your applications:
- Open Apps Backup Restore on your Android device.
- Once open, locate the app or apps you want to back up.
- Click on them, and once you have selected them all, click on the Backup button that you will find at the bottom of the screen.
Restoring an application that we have made a backup copy of is just as easy, and for this, we only have to go to the Archived tab that we will see in the upper right part of the screen.
How to back up your contacts
Another very common thing that we are going to want to save in all cases is going to be the contacts. Many users indeed choose to store them on SIM cards, so making a backup in those cases seems unnecessary. However, it never hurts to do it, because we may have been storing contacts for several years, and losing them all would be a complete nuisance.
To do this, we will have two different possibilities. The fastest option will be to use the Contacts app that our device has installed by default, although we recommend, as we have done above, that you use the Google Contacts app since in this way we will have the backup stored in the cloud The steps that we must follow are the following:
- The first thing will be to generate a .vcf file with our contacts. To do this, go to the Contacts app on your device and look for the Manage Contacts option.
- In it, you should see that the Export contacts option appears. Select it and choose your device’s internal storage as the place to save the file.
- Now, open the Google Contacts app.
- Once inside, select Fix and manage (you’ll see the button at the bottom).
- Choose the Import from file option, select Device, and browse your storage for the .vcf file you created earlier.
In this way, our contacts will be synchronized with our Gmail account, being able to take them wherever we go or restore them to any device.
Also read: How to Block SMS on Mobile
How to make a backup of your WhatsApp chats
Finally, we are also going to teach you how to make a backup of your conversations within WhatsApp. In this case, we also have to go through Google’s cloud storage, although we will do it through the Meta messaging app. We explain how below:
- Access the WhatsApp application and go to the main screen
- Click on the three points that you will find in the upper right part.
- From the dropdown, select Settings.
- A new screen will appear. Tap on Chats.
- Go to the bottom of the screen and select Backup.
- Click on save and choose your Google account.
If we want to restore this WhatsApp backup from Drive, the option will appear when we go to configure the installation of WhatsApp on another device (or on the same one). Just tap Restore when prompted by the app.
How to restore a full backup on Android
In this article, we have given you a very thorough review of how to make a full Backup of your Android, both the phone in general and certain aspects individually. This is very useful so that we do not lose information in case we change the device or have to restore the one we already have. If you have decided to make a complete copy, the truth is that you will not have any kind of problem when it comes to restoring this information, since it is perhaps the easiest process of all.
When we configure the new phone (or the restored phone) it will ask us at some point in the configuration of our Gmail account. When entering it, we will automatically see how the message that we have a backup copy appears on the screen, so all we have to do is restore it and that’s it. Our new mobile with the information of the previous one.