Restore plain music data file (mp3) from Titanium Backup

[Chris902874]

Last year:
1. Bought phone (Verizon S3)
2. Rooted it
3. Installed Titanium backup
4. Set it to backup everything to my dropbox acct.
5. Configured it to have no limit on "external data" backups.

Recently:
Phone lost / destroyed, irretrievable.

Now:
Rooted new phone, same model
Put on titanium backup
tried to restore from dropbox backup

Allows me to restore the following:
apps
app-specific data (meaning data generated by a particular app)

but WHERE ARE MY UNASSOCIATED DATA FILES? How do I restore them? Office documents on the external SD card, music files, etc, etc, etc, everything that is NOT a data file that is "owned" by particular application?

I've searched everywhere. Nowhere does anyone talk about needing to do this. This seems to be one of the most very basic needs.

What am I missing? I had tons of files on my external sd card AND my internal sd card on my old phone. In various directories. Many were music files, video files, movie files, all kinds of files that don't have - necessarily - anything at all to do with any particular phone application.

I had expected that Titanium was backing up everything because I went to great pains to make sure it was backing up everything.

Now I can't find any of my files. Oh, sure, I can restore particular apps and their settings and any files that were PART of those apps but my general data files of varying types (even some files that couldnt' be opened by ANY app on the phone but were copies of some data from my pc I was transporting) - all seem gone.

I still have my big Titanium backup directory on my dropbox. But if my individual data files are in there I have no idea how to restore them. Titanium backup only seems to allow you to restore applications. I can't find an individual file restore in it anywhere.

Help?

 

[Chris902874]

No ideas? From anyone? Titanium backup is one of the most popular android backup programs out there...

 

[Chris902874]

No ideas, anyone? Nobody using Titanium Backup anymore? Nobody ever had to restore regular files?

 

[Golfdriver97]

No ideas, anyone? Nobody using Titanium Backup anymore? Nobody ever had to restore regular files?

Ok. I have read the first post.
My interpretation of Titanium was thus:
It backed up the application and it backed up the data for that application. So say you have Angry Birds and got pretty far. Use Titanium to 'save' your progress so that if something happens to the device you won't have to start form square one.
It freezes/deletes apps you don't want. Mainly used for bloat that is part of the System.

As far as I knew, it didn't back up any of your personal data.

 

[Chris902874]

Ok. I have read the first post.
My interpretation of Titanium was thus:
It backed up the application and it backed up the data for that application. So say you have Angry Birds and got pretty far. Use Titanium to 'save' your progress so that if something happens to the device you won't have to start form square one.
It freezes/deletes apps you don't want. Mainly used for bloat that is part of the System.

As far as I knew, it didn't back up any of your personal data.

That certainly does seem to be the case, though it was not my impression when I bought the application.

So. A backup application that doesn't back up your data. Only certain parts of it.

I wonder how popular it would be if that sentence was in the advertising?

Quite unhappy about this. I know the fault is my own for not understanding or reading carefully enough but I feel there was some truth in advertising lost here as well. Oh well. Back to square one.

 

[Golfdriver97]

That certainly does seem to be the case, though it was not my impression when I bought the application.

So. A backup application that doesn't back up your data. Only certain parts of it.

I wonder how popular it would be if that sentence was in the advertising?

Quite unhappy about this. I know the fault is my own for not understanding or reading carefully enough but I feel there was some truth in advertising lost here as well. Oh well. Back to square one.

For the things that you mentioned, the documents, music, etc...those sort of files I wouldn't have backed up on Titanium anyway. I am a believer in having at least 2 copies of data like that in different places.
I only used Titanium for files that I have no method of backing up, like games. And those are the apps that haven't switched to some kind of data archive on their own servers anyway.

 

[Chris902874]

It's my fault really. I know that.

The way Titanium backup is marketed it really leads you to believe it backs up everything. Everything doesn't really have a lot of definitions. The implication is definitely there that it backs up everything on your phone, when in actuality it does not.

In the fine print it does specifically say what it will back up. What it does not say is what it will NOT back up - just to avoid any possibility of misconception.

I know it's my fault. Mostly.

In the PC world I normally keep multiple copies of of everything on different drives and I store the most critical stuff on a removable drive I put in a fireproof safe.

The stuff I lost was really just a lot of customized ringtones I had created myself, which actually took a lot of time. I should have copied them to my pc network at some point but never did. No app managed these ringtones, so, they're gone. Everything else I had copies of elsewhere.

Titanium backup, on google play states this: "You can backup, restore, freeze (with Pro) your apps + data + Market links. This includes all protected apps & system apps, plus external data on your SD card."

Now to me, and I am no technical newbie, that means everything. I certainly considered my ringtone library to be "external data on my sd card".

I just find the whole thing somewhat deceptive, especially from the #1 rated backup app on Google Play.