• General

  • MEGATHREAD - First Hand Experiences with Seedvault

If you have never restored a backup via Seedvault please do not post. This is a reference thread for future use so that other users don't need to fear/worry about the process or validity

If you have ever restored a Seedvault backup whether that was from a ROM other than GoS, or preferably GoS, id like to hear your input and first hand experiences.

  • What was most frustrating or difficult part of performing the backup(if anything)

  • What was unable to be backup and why?

  • Did you find alternatives to backup the data from previous question? What were those alternative?

  • Did you also use the 'Backup Device Folders' feature? Please describe experience if so.

  • What was the most frustrating or difficult part of the restore process?

  • Did anything fail to restore even though it was backed up? If so what?

  • How many apps/services required user input after restore process to return to last known state(pickup where left off)

  • Lastly, scale of 1-10 with 10 being so simple a newborn can do it; how would you rate this backup/restore to other methods such as titanium backup, swift backup, Samsung smart switch or even Google backup? this includes things like app data, the app itself, overall simplicity or features like backing up device folders as well

Thank you for your time and input on this, the goal is to have this become a sticky or referenced in a faq of sorts.

As someone who's in the process of backing everything up to do a fresh install . I'll share my issues as of now and post more when its over .
First use a high quality USB drive I tried my cheep drives and its super slow and always fails , switched to Samsung drive and its 1/4 of the time to back up .

Second I've gotten a backup complete but in reality there wasn't enought space on the drive and it failed .
I backed up my texts and pictures separate from seedvault so I wanted to back up some apps and appdata as well as files .
I selected the apps I wanted and when I tried the backup it brought in more apps then I selected which is kind of annoying .
The other odd thing is you can't delete a backup via desktop. I'm using Linux maybe windows is better when I delete the seedvault back file it doesnt go to trash it creates a lost folder in the drive and puts it in there .
FYI seedvauld backups are hidden folders so you have to enable view hidden folders .
Only way to delete a backup is to format the entire drive .

    Skyway

    Skyway Ah do you know if the"cheap" drives were USB 2 or USB 3? Samsung to my knowledge only makes USB 3 these days and this would make senses given reduced time. I would add if using a USBC to USB A adapter like the white one that comes in the box, make sure it supports USB 3 speeds.

    It's interesting your say it copied more than you selected, without revealing anything too personal are you comfortable sharing the types of app or maybe the name themselves so others may be aware of potential slowdowns or roadblocks?

    I believe I've encountered similar experiences, but have you tried also deleting the LOST+FOUND folder as well? I believe it's like a recycle bin of sorts. Feel free to correct me
    Format while viable is a permanent delete of data in most situations !and makes data recovery difficult if not impossible in some cases without expensive tools or software so please be aware when formatting drives.

    Thank you for sharing your experience

          N3rdTek

          N3rdTek you know if the"cheap" drives were USB 2 or USB 3? Samsung to my knowledge only makes USB 3 these days and this would make senses given reduced time. I would add if using a USBC to USB A adapter like the white one that comes in the box, make sure it supports USB 3 speeds.

          Yes usb 3 is best , I was using usb3 to usb c adapter.
          The cheap drive was not usb 3 rated.

          N3rdTek It's interesting your say it copied more than you selected, without revealing anything too personal are you comfortable sharing the types of app or maybe the name themselves so others may be aware of potential slowdowns or roadblocks?

          It included weather app home security apps and some others that in the seedvauild menu said didn't support backups .

          N3rdTek I believe I've encountered similar experiences, but have you tried also deleting the LOST+FOUND folder as well? I believe it's like a recycle bin of sorts. Feel free to correct me
          Format while viable is a permanent delete of data in most situations !and makes data recovery difficult if not impossible in some cases without expensive tools or software so please be aware when formatting drives.

          I tried to delete the lost folder and it gave me an error and wouldn't delete , even when I opened folder as root. I was trying to delete the failed backups. I believe this is by design by seedvault .

          I ended up not using the seedvault backups as it brought too much of settings and other data back in and I was having some glitches so I wanted to have the settings be stock . just wanted a few apps backed up . but was able to do them other ways .
          For SMS call logs and contacts I used SMS import/ export from f droid . backed up photos over USB to desktop .k9 mail and cheogram have built in backups . had some voice recordings , I was able to find the app folder via desktop and save from there .

                  3 months later

                  I just made another post before finding this thread. Seedvault has been a joy to use for months... Before the last 2 updates, it would fail sometimes if I was backing up a lot of apps. I'd need to exclude some to make it succeed.

                  I always used the folder backup, even today I backed up 110GB using it! Always successful!

                  After the second last update, Seedvault started to backup constants, it didn't before. It also never failed and backed up large amount of apps! Then with the last update, it seems to finish, but only backs up apk's but not app data.

                  I'm going to try again and I'll report back.

                  I must say I really love the OS and the effort that is put into it and the upstream support this project provides. However, Seedvault as a baucup solution is absolutely unusable it is unreliable and unintuitive. I reverted a friends phone back to stock Rom as I don't want to be responsible for a not working or incomplete backup in case of a lost or damaged phone.

                  So this was my experience:
                  Migrate a friends Pixel 4a5G to a Pixel 6. The backup was setup to sync to my webdav server using dav5x mounts. In belief that automativ backups were working fine all the time. Just to make sure I checked when the last backup was made, I was shocked to see that the last backup was made months ago. A warning about this would have been great.
                  So I manually triggered a backup - ending with a sucessful backup, however an incomplete one (I know this has techical reasons, however a non tech user would not care about the reasoning, they expect a backup to do what it says: create a complete backup).
                  Nevertheless, I figured might as well try to restore the partital backup on the new phone:

                  On initial setup on the new phone, only usb-restore is offered. Fair enough - if Graphene does not want to ship additional apps. However, trying to restore this backup using the UI is not possible - it is only possible using some #### number combination. Long story short after setting up dav5x the restoration process "completed" with merely a changed background picture - no further errors, however also with no data, apps or settings restored. After trying again I accidentally closed the seedvault window and the restoration process was canceled, leaving the phone in a state I could not be sure of. After another attemptth dav5x no apps or backups were restored again. So I tried setting all up on an usb drive, starting with a new backup on the old phone. First it is frustrating that the old backuplocation gets wiped when selecting an alternate location - good bye webdav backup. There is no information on how the usb should be formated and the detection was kind of wonky too until I could select it as a backup location even though it was mounted in the OS correctly. The backup went through eventually with weird decisions made for me such as app "was not backed up as it was not used recently", "Quota Exceeded", "Backup not supported", "No data to be backed up". Again: just back up my phone with all apps and data regardless whether it was used or not.
                  Second attemt on restoring, now via USB: The USB-drive was simply not recognised on initial setup. So after multiple attempts I launched the restauration process using the counterintuitive ## key combination. End result was that it did not work, except it showed me all tha apps that it tried to restore but failed, including system apps of the old os such as the google play store which I figure may conflict with the os by graphenes sandboxed design?

                  Nevertheless, I was never able to restore the backup and wasted 4 hours. I manually transferred all settings and apps. For me, I can deal with this. But other non techy people need to able to have a reliable backup so my only conclusion was that Graphene is not for everybody. I even considered switching back to stock os myself. However I've been using Graphene so long I just can't bring myself to use a Googled phone anymore.

                  I really hope this situaiton changes, but this unreliable mechanism is an absolute dealbreaker for people that just want to use their phone.

                  All together the backup/restoration process gets a 1/10 from me.

                    The biggest problem I've had with seedvault is that you can't restore during system setup. Yes sure it offers something along those lines, but you need to have nextcloud client installed and configured before you can restore, and that can't be done until after you've completed first boot.

                    Fortunately, restore can be initiated after first boot using dialer code *#*#RESTORE#*#*

                    The second problem is all the stuff that it won't back up. There's usually a whole bunch of stuff in the list of "Apps that do not allow data backup". Kinda defeats the purpose of a backup if it won't create a complete backup. Neo Backup works great, but requires root, which is frowned upon.

                      bookreader Seedvault backs up all the apk's for the apps that are in the list of apps that " do not allow data backup," and it also fails to backup data for a lot of the apps in the list that it allows data backup for, sadly... It's a good solution when it works, but its imperfect...

                      Swift Backup doesn't require root, just Shizuku, it backs up external app data, media data, just not data in the /data/data folder unless you have root.

                      Root is frowned upon for a good reason. Breaking verified boot is a big deal and a huge security risk. Not to mention its a bigger deal than most think if you have an unlocked bootloader and loose your phone, as then your bootloader can just be reflashed for one without a lockscreen, and voila! The physical attacker is past you PIN/password!

                      Lucky, there is a way to root your Pixel with a LOCKED BOOTLOADER! I've been running like this for over 6 months now, and it is a bit of a challenge at first and requires some knowledge of the command line, but its not too hard. You need to use a tool called avbroot to generate custom AVB and OTA keys to sign the boot images so you can have verified boot and lock the bootloader, while integrating Magisk into a patched OTA update.

                      Few warnings:

                      If you ever disable OEM Unlocking, or cause a diferently-signed image to be installed (install Magisk using the "direct install" method, or accept a regular OTA update from the GrapheneOS updater) your phone will be bricked permanently beyond recovery. You need to disable the System Updater first thing after each factory reset or new install, and be smart and remember this.

                      To update, you take the GrapheneOS OTA update, patch it using your original keys you made during original install using the avbroot tool, and sideload it! Takes 5 minutes each update!

                      The tool runs on Windows, Linux and MacOS now with it's latest release!

                      Thought I'd throw this out there, may alleviate your backup woes! Then you can use Neo Backup, and even better, Swift Backup! Personally, I use Seedvault on USB for System Settings, then Neo Backup on a few apps that it works well on, then top it off with Swift Backup since it only adds on data that is missing, never deletes data while restoring. Swift is also the most reliable. Then I run Seedvault again to put my home screen together, and voila! Full restore of everything!

                      ...would be amazing if Seedvault were back to how it was before last update though, and goes without saying I CANT WAIT for the backup solution that the GrapheneOS has planned. Its going to kick and and all root solutions out of the water!

                          bookreader Fortunately, restore can be initiated after first boot using dialer code ##RESTORE##

                          Maybe? Recently I was trying to do a SeedVault backup. For me this means immediately creating a blank profile and restoring into it, because for me backups that act successful usually won't restore. The setup wizard rejected a backup, so I tried skipping it and then using the dialer code. When I called it, nothing happened. But when I went back to the owner profile there was a SeedVault failure screen -- in other words, issuing the dialer code in a secondary profile triggered a restore attempt in the owner profile. That definitely didn't happen the last time I tried the dialer code.

                          Has anybody else observed the dialer code in a secondary profile triggering a restore attempt in the owner profile?

                              de0u The dialer code doesn't work for me at all... I just made a brand new profile and trued it... No dice for me...

                                Tryptamine Not sure why you're suggesting "swift backup" since as you pointed out, it still requires root. No benefits there, and you add an even bigger security hole, which is giving an untrustworthy closed source application access to your data.

                                    Tryptamine If you ever disable OEM Unlocking, or cause a diferently-signed image to be installed (install Magisk using the "direct install" method, or accept a regular OTA update from the GrapheneOS updater) your phone will be bricked permanently beyond recovery. You need to disable the System Updater first thing after each factory reset or new install, and be smart and remember this.

                                    No need to go to dramatic lengths, it will refuse to install the update.

                                        bookreader It will not refuse to install the update. Phones that have been rooted with avbroot and then accepted an unpatched OTA update have been permanently bricked before. This is one of the main warnings on the avbroot page...

                                            bookreader Swift Backup does not require root, it only requires root for it's full feature set. Without root and with no other app it will singly backup and restore apk's, wallpaers, WiFi networks, call logs, and messages. When paired with Shizuku that is connected to Wireless Debugging, it will batch backup and restore apps and their external data, expansion data, and media data. The only thing root is required for is regular "app data" in the /data/data folder. External data is in the /data folder and many apps keep their data there and that will be captured without root.

                                            For system settings, contacts and dictionary without root or Seedvault, use My Backup.

                                                bookreader you can use Shizuku, and wireless debugging to use it as a replacement for Seedvault, you just will be missing some app data. Still with the current state of Seedvault not backing up APKs, its better than nothing... Hence why I was suggesting it.

                                                  bookreader

                                                  bookreader Good to know it would refuse the update... Why is that? Because of the different signing keys? To be clear, the GrapheneOS release is still signed with the same keys as the regular release, its only the keys that sign the init boot and vbmeta for the bootloader that are custom. Would the update still be refused?

                                                  If you read the release notes for avbroot here:

                                                  https://github.com/chenxiaolong/avbroot/releases/tag/v2.2.0

                                                  It clearly states that accepting an unpatched OTA update or anything that results in a differently signed state will 0-out the boot and recovery partitions, and because the bootloader is locked recovery will not be possible. Fastboot flashing unlock will also not be possible in this case, leading to a permanent brick. Hence why I've been avoiding OTA updates like the plague until I can build my own release from source. Unfortunately building Vanadium has been troublesome...

                                                  • de0u replied to this.

                                                        Tryptamine If you read the release notes for avbroot here:

                                                        https://github.com/chenxiaolong/avbroot/releases/tag/v2.2.0

                                                        It clearly states that accepting an unpatched OTA update or anything that results in a differently signed state will 0-out the boot and recovery partitions, and because the bootloader is locked recovery will not be possible.

                                                        I don't think it says that.

                                                        I think it says that if the boot area were zeroed then the device would be bricked. I think it also says that if a regular OTA update were flashed then the system, as patched by avbroot, would be unbootable. I don't think it claims to be describing the normal operation of sideloading.

                                                        Overall I see that text as warnings by the avbroot authors about potential bad consequences of using avbroot, which can be avoided by not using avbroot.