Android Backup: Create a Backup With Google Drive

Kalin Anastasov
Backupology
Published in
3 min readJul 1, 2022

Over time, our phone becomes much slower because the performance is not the same for various reasons: installing apps, memory consumption, and more.

Sometimes we want to keep a lot of information from that terminal so that we do not lose any data and transfer it to the new smartphone, necessary if it is photos, videos, or contacts.

The ideal way if you want to restore it from the factory is to make a full backup, saving all the information that, in the end, is all that has been collected for many months.

There are several ways to do this, whether you’re rooted or not, and we’ll explain how to create and restore it. Remember that you must have enough battery if you want to create it.

It will not be possible if there is no more than 70%, so you need to have a charger next to it. Whether you are root or not, you will be able to do it the same way; the best case is to do it without being root.

Create a backup without the Root option

By creating a backup on Android, we will save everything necessary: photos, videos, documents and files, contacts, applications, and WhatsApp conversations.

The ideal way is to hold everything in Google Drive, one of the primary applications to store everything and restore it. With Google Drive, you can quickly back up, allowing us to upload data to the cloud, from SMS, contacts, call history, and everything containing Google Photos, applications, and device settings.

It takes time to export all this to the cloud.

Create a backup with Google Drive

The first step is to go to Settings > Google > Backup and click on “Back up now” Once the process is complete, they will all be in Google Drive. It should take a few minutes, so do not touch the phone unless necessary.

Reset your phone to leave it as it came from the factory. After doing this, enter the email you backed up with; you must use the same account to restore your Google Drive backup. Once you open it, it will let you know it found a backup, restored, and expect everything to be done in a few minutes.

Save your photos and videos from Google Photos

If you want to save your photos and videos and go step by step, you can do that because all the pictures and videos are saved in Google Drive following a different action than the backup.

Google Photos and a few other options within the app give us that option. To create a backup copy of Google Photos, you will need to open the application, click on the three horizontal bars, select all existing folders within the application, including WhatsApp, Telegram, and others, and click on Import everything to Google Drive.

With this, all files will be attached, which is essential if you want to save all of the above. If you want to save all the files on your phone, you can connect it to a computer with a USB cable; this will allow you to do it manually.

The process can be a bit more tedious, but at the same time, you have everything available in a safe place.

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Kalin Anastasov
Backupology

Freelance wordsmith in love with personal finance. Crafting stories, decoding money, and navigating the twenties. 📚💰