Not understanding the basics of an SD card, and can I get FULL backup from it?

[Gates Is Antichrist]

I'm an intermediate/advanced user but perplexed on one item, and am densely stupid when I try to read about it: SD cards. Gurus always say "get an SD card" which is cheap, so I added a 28G to my 16G unit, (a LG G Stylo bought from PCS Metro; Lollipop, soon to be Marshmallow). A service tech said, they could restore data from an SD card even if my phone unit had a catastrophic failure. The problem is, I have the card, but don't understand how to use it.

For the following, assume that I desire to protect against a complete phone failure except where the SD card is okay.

Question: Is the SD card automatically saving everything there is? Or do I need to manually copy or move things to it? Can I add software or an app to manage this?

My dream would be to have a perfect image of everything on the SD - all my 5 home screens' icons(apps), all their settings and system settings, all my calendar reminders (hundreds), my 4 recurring alarms, my SwiftKey and settings, and text messages. Then I could get a replacement phone, slide in the SD, issue some command, and ideally resume as if nothing happened. Is this dream attainable?

I assume that all phone and email contacts (and calendar?) self sync from Google when you enter your gmail ID into a new phone, and photos sync from copies at Google in Google Photos. And that Visual Voicemail syncs when you enter your phone # and password. So all of those are safely saved "in the cloud?" How about text messages?

Note, I don't think I'll use the extra SD storage for photos or videos (I have 7G free of my 16G currently) and presently I have no MP3s (though if I learned how, I would love to copy a few Gig from my home PC to the SD). I do occasionally have to click "download" on an attachment to a text or maybe email, so those are probably stored on my phone.

The thing is, I never consciously specify SD for anything, so for all I know it's just a dumb item drawing power.

Thanks. Sorry for lengthiness, but I tried to be halfway succinct yet give a full picture.

 

[AlphaTango414]

Data does not automatically backup your device. Use this process for a full device backup . However, you need a pc to do this and a pc to restore it.

There are several apps that will back up certain things. Just understand what they do and do not back up so you aren't surprised when something is missing after a restore.

 

[chanchan05]

An SD card really is yesterday tech, but something the market is unwilling to let go of since it's cheap and easy to use. It's basically an extra drive on your phone. Think of it as like a flash drive you connected to your PC and left connected there. It can be removed any time, and files have to be manually transferred to it.
You can use it to regularly backup your phone using Helium (Premium version gives you scheduling, otherwise you'll have to do it manually) if you don't have regular PC access, but it only saves app data, messages and a few other stuff. Photos and other media need a different method.

 

[Gates Is Antichrist]

Thank you both and sorry for my delay in saying so (vacation, and it seems to take 4 weeks to catch up when you take off 1, arggh). Titanium needs root and, like Dirty Harry, I know my limitation of root expertise so I'm refraining and looking at Helium instead. Both of you got me thinking about the process, made 2 solid suggestions that I could try, so truly thanks for kicking me forward.

I checked "Back up my data" in settings/general/backup & reset, which says it backs up app data and WiFi passwords to Google servers, tied to gmail account. According to my research it APPEARS that Google already covers everything important except text messages (SMS) and their attachments (MMS) and call logs; I got SMS Backup & Restore for those key items. So I gather that backup software programs are mainly just for convenience (perhaps adding something extra like texts)? Can I count on a new phone automagically pulling everything below (notably omitting texts, call logs) from gmail?

I read in one article that google/gmail backs up
Google Calendar settings
Wi-Fi networks & passwords
Home screen wallpapers
Gmail settings
Apps installed through Google Play (backed up on the Play Store app)
Display settings (Brightness & Sleep)
Language & Input settings
Date & Time
Third-party app settings & data (varies by app)
(this is expressing it differently than as seen in Settings/General/Accounts/Google)

TIA

 

[Gates Is Antichrist]

chanchan05, what a perfect and logical explanation about the current state of SD. I have read with interest the irony of diminishing SD support, vs. the new Marshmallow SD capability that I'm sure you are aware of - and how they seem to be going away from some devices, and away from Google, but not Samsung. Odd. At any rate, I really like the idea of a 30G drive, so I'm going to use it if they let me, for many more movies and music.

 

[Gates Is Antichrist]

By the way I did figure out how to copy .mp3s "stable-ly" from Win 7 desktop to SD. I was having a hell of a time with USB cable. After a few minutes it would fail and say "lost connection" and the SD "folder" windows would disappear mid copy. My solution was to put the SD in an adaptor and use the adaptor slot on the front of my new Dell. ALMOST all of my copy problems went away, and bonus, I got a drive letter, so I could use DOS too. (Incredible how the cretins at MS cluelessly don't grasp that users still want to do del A?BC.D* which is impossible to do in any Windows explorer or folder interfaces)

BTW, the vexing problem that remains, and I really believe it's simply an inept Microsoft "feature," is that when I do a big folder copy, and when it hits a file that is already at the destination, W7 offers to let me overwrite, skip or cancel. They even provide a theoretically fantastic checkbox to persist my choice or not. SO I go "skip this file" and instruct to do that henceforth (i.e. I check the box). But every single time, every time, it quits right away. So I have to choose overwrite, or the copy won't complete, unless I stand there and push skip 1200 times. This happened with a huge 5000 file folder copy where 1200 of the files were already there. FWIW!