How to take a backup of your Android phone

It’s a good idea to regularly backup your smartphone device in order to avert any unexpected data disasters — like dropping your phone in water, disrupting a software update or your phone just decides to stop working one day with you perceivable rhyme or reason.

Phones breaking down is a common phenomenon especially since the device has become an integral part of daily life since the dawn of the digital age.

The best way to make sure that you don’t look any precious memories or important pieces of information from your phone is to take a back up.

For Android smartphone users, you can either do that by using the default option of Google or making copies of your data on your PC.

How to take a backup of your Android smartphone using Google:

1. Open the ‘setting on your phone’. The option on most Android phones is available in the app drawer and can also be found on the notification bar.

2. Within your setting, you’ll find a tab called ‘Google’

3. Once you tap on Google, select the option ‘Backup’ in the menu

4. Inside ‘Backup’ switch the toggle that says ‘Backup to Google Drive’ so that it’s highlighted, which indicates that the backup feature is now turned on.

5. If you have multiple Google accounts on your Android smartphone, you can switch which account you want to use to back up your phone as per your convenience by tapping the ‘Account’ tab.

Now that your backup is setup, Google will automatically take care of the rest.

How to take a backup of your Android smartphone using PC:

The simplest way to backup your phone using the PC is to simply plug your phone into the computer using a USB cable.

1. Make sure you phone is unlocked and connect it to your computer. Select the notification that will pop up on your phone indicating that the phone has been connected using a USB.

2. Different phones show options in different ways but there will always be an option that says ‘Transfer Files’. Select that to begin to backup your phone.

3. Your computer will then show your smartphone as a new drive that has been connected. Go to ‘This PC’ and open the option that shows your phone, and then select ‘Internal Storage Device’.

4. Now you have access to all your phones files and folders. You can either select all the folders and ‘drag-and-drop’ them into a separate folder on your PC or you select particular folders to filter the data that you want to backup.

WhatsApp will have its own folder and if you’re looking to save photos from your camera, you can find them in the DCIM folders. Any audio recordings will be in ‘Recordings’ and other audio files will under ‘Music’.

See also:
How to take a backup of your iOS smartphone