Rooted, want the new ICS ROM questions

[Jhob]

I am very new to roting etc. I was able to do it using revolutionary quite easily.

I have been rooted for about 6 months. My reasons then for rooting were to gain wifi hot spot apps, be able to take screen shots, wireless teather, and to gain access to my HDMI out. All things I felt I should have been able to use with out rooting.

Recently I have seen the new CM 7 mod with ICS functions added to it. I think I am ready to take the leap and start flashing different ROM's to my phone, but want to make sure I do it as problematic free as possible.

After rooting I did delete some apps and programs from my phone with out backing them up. Technically I thought they were backed up, and they were not. So few questions I have.

How do I back up my factory ROM, and go back to it later etc?

Is it possible to get back the programs/apps I have deleted that were not backed up?

Any tips durring the process to avoid mistakes others have made?

Thank you for your time. I realize some of these questions have probly already been addressed, and I am sorry for the repeat.

 

[SmokeCrawler]

How do I back up my factory ROM, and go back to it later etc?

You back it up in your recovery. Yes you can restore it if you are not satisfied with the new rom. To back it up you will see backup/restore or nandroid. It depends on the recovery you are using. Another type of backing up is using titanium backup or mybackup root. You can backup the apps + data. This keeps things simple when switching roms. With titanium backup don't back up system apps when changing to AOSP, like cm7. It will cause a bootloop.

Is it possible to get back the programs/apps I have deleted that were not backed up?

To get the programs download a stock rom on a pc. Just open the zip file and go to system > apps and find the ones you need. Just a fyi, if you use cm7 then you can't use anything from sense as it won't work. Sprint apps are fine to use.

Any tips durring the process to avoid mistakes others have made?
Just read, ask questions before you do anything that you are not comfortable with, and watch some vids. This should keep you from making any mistakes

 

[myrcgarage]

I watched these 2 videos before flashing over to Deck:

How to flash the Gingerbread Deck 1.3 Rom on the HTC EVO 4G - YouTube

ANDROID Applications (How-To Backup & Restore) *Titanium Backup* - YouTube