Is there any way to do a full eMMC backup and reflash from a PC?
 

I need a fresh N900 to do a few experiments on, but I'm unwilling to let go of my existing Maemo install, which I customized extensively before I discontinued its use and would never be able to restore to current status again from memory. Why? Nostalgia, I suppose, as well as keeping some old apps that I can't find in the repos anymore, or maybe I sideloaded them - who can remember.

Ideally I'd like to do a full clone from USB and store the result as a massive compressed image file, which I could then reflash again to the N900 in case of need, replacing the existing eMMC content.

Is this feasible? If not, is there some procedure approaching this?

Edit: I'm reading up while I wait for answers and I may have explained this incorrectly. By "eMMC" I meant "entire content of the flash drive in the phone".

Re: Is there any way to do a full eMMC backup and reflash from a PC?
 

Hi,

I think you are looking for BackupMenu...

jm

Re: Is there any way to do a full eMMC backup and reflash from a PC?
 

Yes, BackupMenu can create rootfs.tar and optfs.tar and restore them.

From its interface (which you can enter right after boot) you can then switch your N900 to a USB mass storage mode and copy all of your MyDocs, where the two archives above can be stored.

Re: Is there any way to do a full eMMC backup and reflash from a PC?
 

Thanks, it seems that should do. It isn't *exactly* what I wanted, but it appears to offer similar functionality with a lot less hassle, so yay!

Re: Is there any way to do a full eMMC backup and reflash from a PC?
 

It has saved me lots of times. And, just today I restored my then-primary N900 which I messed up before Christmas, and it worked flawlessly.

The uncompressed tar of my ubi0:rootfs was 341 MB and optfs (home and opt) was 1.2 GB. It took more than 10 minutes but I was relieved at the end :-)

Re: Is there any way to do a full eMMC backup and reflash from a PC?
 

Backupmenu is best choice.
Not exactly what you were looking for, but ...

You may insert a 32GB SD card and just store your Backupmenu backups of /rootfs and /optfs on SD.
And then do a simple 'dd /if=/home/user/MyDocs /of=/media/mmc/eMMC.img' with some more parameters.
Not like USB but as convenient as ;)

p.s.: with N9 and ubiboot your preferred way via USB is possible. On N900 there is rescueImage but I really do not know if all partitions are exported to USB, so it would be possible to dd them (never heard/read/did, but ...).