Backing up Applications

If you have installed your applications on the MMC card, they will still be available on the phone's Main menu after the deep reset. However, the Application Manager program might not keep track of them anymore. So, you might lose the ability to update or remove those applications. For the Application Manager to work, you need to copy the contents of the C:\System\Install\ directory to the E:\System\Install\ directory on the MMC card. Those directories contain the installers (i.e., the .sis archive file) of applications installed on the device. Since those system directories are not available in the Nokia PC Suite's phone browser, you have to copy them manually using a program such as FExplorer.

If you did not install applications on the MMC card and you have not backed up the entire phone memory using an automatic backup method covered in the previous section, you must reinstall all the applications from scratch.

Backing up documents

The best way to save documentssuch as the email messages, MMS messages, audio/video files, and imagesfrom being erased in a deep reset is to save them in the MMC card, which you can take out of the device when you do the deep reset. You can configure the Messaging and Camera applications to automatically save files to the MMC card.
If you do not save the phone documents in the MMC card, you can still copy and save everything in the phone's Gallery and Messages folders to a PC via the PC Suite before the deep reset.

Backing up PIM data

The phone's Personal Information Manager (PIM) data, such as contacts and calendar items, can be synchronized with PIM applications on desktop computers . You can synchronize them back to the phone after the reset.

If synchronization is not an option for you, you can use the backup and restore utility on the Nokia PC Suite, and request that it back up/restore the contacts and calendar data only.

Or, if you want to pick and choose which PIM items to back up, you can copy them to the PC via the Nokia PC Suite's phone browser. The PIM items appear as .vcf (for contacts) and .vcs (for calendar items) files on the PC. When you copy them back, the phone automatically converts them to the phone's internal format.

Manual Backup and Restore

The automatic backup and restore solution is easy and effective. But it requires discipline to back up your data regularly and to remember to back it up before each experiment. It is also less useful if the backup interval is too long and too much user data is changed between backups. In addition, if your phone is infected with a virus before the last backup and you have just noticed the virus now, how do you know which past backup is the clean one that can be safely restored?

Using manual methods described in this section, you will be able to selectively back up some of your phone data right before the deep reset, and then restore it after the reset. Here, I assume that you can still boot up your phone and operate it.

Even if your phone is fully functional and is not affected by malicious programs, you can still optimize the phone's memory by "refreshing" it. The manual backup process before refreshing gives you the opportunity to eliminate stale data and programs.

Backing Up MMC

You can back up everything in the phone's main memory to the MMC card via the Extras >Memory menu. Just choose the Options

Backup phone mem. menu and the data is backed up in a file, E:\Backup\Backup.arc, on the MMC card

When you decide to restore the phone memory from the backup file, just choose the Options Restore from card menu in the Extras>Memory menu. The phone will reboot itself after the memory contents are restored.

The Backup.arc file is written over every time you perform a backup. So, by default, you can recover to the phone state only at the last backup time. To work around this, you can copy the Backup.arc file off the memory card after each backup and archive it on your computer periodically. If you need to recover to an earlier date, you can copy the correct Backup.arc file back to the memory card and then perform the restore operation.

Backup and Restore Using the PC Suite.

The Nokia PC Suite allows you to back up the entire content of the phone's internal memory (the C: drive) to a PC file. The full backup file includes the following:

• Contacts
• Calendar items
• Documents such as notes, email messages, and MMS messages
• Images and other media files in the phone's Gallery
• Settings including GPRS access points, email, and other connection settings
• Personal preferences such as wallpaper, ring tones, and speed-dial shortcuts
• Applications including Symbian C++ and Java programs

I recommend doing the backup periodically. If you mess up and have to do a deep reset, you can locate the closest clean backup file and restore it to the phone via the PC Suite. The PC Suite puts your backup files into %SystemRoot%\Nokia\Phone Model\Backup (e.g., C:\Nokia\Nokia 3650\Backup for a typical backup for a Nokia 3650 phone).

The PC Suite also allows you to back up and restore a subset of data in the flash memory. You can choose any combination of the following four categories of data: contacts, calendar items, documents, and images.