Backup and Restore

[Insti-Gator]

Does anyone know for sure how the new Backup and Restore works on TomTom Home version 2.1.0.92.

I did a backup after installing Firmware version 7.131. As usual it took a very long time to complete. Today I was going to call the support center to work on a problem that I reported via email and they wanted me to call them. Just in case I decided to make another backup before calling them and it only took a couple of minutes. Did it only backup changes since the last backup? I'm a little concerned. With the map situation I need to know for sure what backup and restore is doing. With the old version of Home I could name the backup (from the factory, after firmware update, after map update, etc.). With that system I could go back to any point in time. If I only have one backup I'm at risk. What if I developed a problem and didn't realize it until after doing a backup. I could never get back to a clean install. Not Good.

 

[GAW]

2.1 backups

It looks like you are right. I did a backup, and it did not create a new one - it updated and/or wrote over the last one. It does not look like you have any control of this process in 2.1 - another reason that might explain why they have not released in officially in the US.

Also another reason I am probably going to go back to 1.5.

 

[Insti-Gator]

Update on previous information. I moved all of my old backups from the previous version of Home to a different directory on my hard drive. I then did a backup with the new Home and it took quite a while. When it finished I did another one and it scanned the device and ended in a few minutes. I'm sure it just looked for something new, found nothing and ended. It DID NOT create another backup.

My old backups are probably useless since the new Home will probably not work with them. To get around the issue of not having multiple backups I plan on copying the current backup to a different directory, renaming it to something meaningful (after firmware 7.131 update). I'll do this after every update and hopefully if I need a previous backup I can delete the current backup and move the one that I really want to restore to the backup directory and rename it to Backup01. Does anyone see a problem with that.

 

[JimC1702]

Interesting that this topic just came up. I just finished doing a backup using 2.1 and it completed in less than a minute. I had 5 backups in the folder and I checked the file properties, none of them had today's date. So if it updated one of them, it didn't change the file date.

So I changed the preferences for where to store backups and now I'm doing another one. This one is taking forever, just like it always used to.

Jim

 

[Pedro2NR]

Just copy all of your TomTom's contents and paste them in a folder in your computer. It does the same thing as a backup from HOME and faster.

 

[Insti-Gator]

Thanks for the tip Pedro. One question. If I copied the contents of my One to a directory and then had a problem, how would I restore it? Just copy the directory back to the One I assume, but would I have to format it first? Is there anything that is hidden or protected or wouldn't be restored? Thanks.

 

[Pedro2NR]

Not that I remember. You might want to have your windows explorer's option set to view hidden files.
Yes if you want to restore just format the card (I recommend a 2GB card) and paste all the contents of the manual backup. I did that recently and it worked fine!

 

[thaJack]

Based on a conversation that I had with TomTom on the phone, you can also simply browse to the drive that represents your device and copy/paste all of the files on it into another directory. This will effectively back up the device.

This came up when I was trying to use the same installation of TomTom Home to manage a 700 and a 720. It doesn't do a very good job of managing multiple devices.