Don't rely on "Backup by Google One" for DroidScript or other apps

[Tony G]

I'm simply sharing an experience with everyone here because the topic might come up. This is not intended to be a request for enhancements because there are enough of those on the topic of data export, etc.

I know the standard way to backup DS projects is by sharing an SPK. While I've written a lot of code in DS there was nothing that I couldn't re-write (better) so I did not choose that option.

Instead I relied on "Backup by Google One", a built-in, automated service which advertises saving apps and data to "the cloud". On init of a new phone, all apps and data should be restored back to the last save point.

This does not work as advertised. I have little lament about this particular lost data, little blame against Google for once again screwing up something that should easily be testable, and as a developer for over four decades I'm embarrassed at getting caught with my pants down. Let's get beyond that for our purposes - backup of DS code.

The folder Android/Data/com.smartphoneremote.androidscriptfree contains projects that should be saved and restored, but that did not happen in this case.

One might look closely and suggest there's a timing issue : The data might be restored, but when apps are reloaded and executed, the file system is re-initialized - not so with an update/overlay of an existing application. No - it looks to me like the folder doesn't exist after a restore, when apps and data are loaded, and before apps are executed to create their structured folder tree under the root.

Why did the folders not exist in the Google One backup? I have two ideas. The first is that the backup itself is getting blocked by "privacy" permissions established in Android v10+. The second is that the backup was bad - no data in the backup, no data to restore. On the phone there is no warning about failed backups. But looking deeply at the metadata about the backups it seems they've been failing. That info doesn't surface in a notification or other obvious location. And with only one backup that's constantly recycled, if the latest fails, there are no previous successful backups to back to for recovery.

My original phone with DS was a Pixel3XL, fully current with the latest Android OS. That phone met an untimely death and I needed immediate transition to a new Pixel 7. Looking at Google One storage I only now see that the backups failed on both the 3 and the 7, without notice. The last backup attempt was three days ago. I charge my phone regularly and it has plenty of time for idle activity. I'll fix whatever is wrong - now that I know something is wrong.

The restore of the "Backups by Google One" doesn't show that a backup had failed. The restore doesn't indicate that the restore is incomplete. Everything progresses without notice of any anomaly, giving the user no ability to recover from problems.

Way to go, Google! Can anyone there spell QA?

Unfortunately we have no way to verify Backups by Google One because they can only be used when first initializing a phone after factory reset. You would need to save your current phone, restore from a previous backup to check it, then restore from your current data. As noted however, if your current backup fails you may not know it until you see your data wasn't restored. ( SMH ) What about Support? Sure, if you want to pay for it - probably worth the trivial expense for such things. But there is no free support forum and Help Center has never had an article like "what to do if our backups fail".

Summary : While built-in automated backups sounds great - Trust but Verify backups for all of your applications that store local data, no matter which backup tools you use. Use the DS SPK backup mechanism, and similar exports for all of your apps that have data and implement a process to occasionally verify the backups. In this event I also lost SqlLite databases in Memento, and Tasker profiles/tasks. That's OK, I've been planning to shift all of that to DS anyway and have consciously not been aggressive about these backups as I am about other systems.

Everyone's experience is different, I'm just conveying my own here in the hope that it might help someone avoid the same.

Tony G