Can someone explain to me how I can do a full full full backup of my n900? With my old n series I used to just use the Nokia Tool in PC Suite, but that doesn't work with this phone.

I like to keep a safe backup of everything on my PC incase anything were to happen. (touchwood!)

if you are willing to use the terminal then you can use rsync.
after becoming root and adding the devel repository you can get it with apt-get install rsync
then you could use:
rsync -avHl --exclude-from=/media/mmc1/sync_exclude / /media/mmc1/backup
where the sdcard is mounted a mmc1
sync_exclude would contain:
/sys
/proc
/media
/mnt
/home/user/MyDocs
/home/

that saved my *** a couple of times...

And is there a more user friendly way of doing this?

isn't there a backup function among the preinstalled apps? never used it though...

Yes there is. Never used it either so not sure if it is a full back up. And I think it backs up to the phone so you may need to use a SDHC card - save to SDHC card and back up from there. Not sure if you can save to PC.

I have used the backup app on the n900 but I am not sure that it backs everything up. It looks like it only backs up settings.

The built in backup application is pretty handy. Once messed my N900 up and had to reflash it, used the restore.

Restores:
- calendar
- repos in program manager
- contacts
- settings (wifi, whatever)
...

It does not restore the programms, but offers you to reinstall them from repositories, if available. You can also restore programs later if you need to add the repository they come from.

It did a pretty good job. The only thing I noticed was that merged contacts were unmerged again.

Best regards,
Corwin

@ corwin:
hm, better than nothing, i guess.

Just not to be misunderstood:
It dies not restore the programs but it does redownload and install them (you are asked if you want that and can check / uncheck them one by one.

So I think it is a pretty good solution, actually.

Night
Corwin

I don't think it backup application specific settings though.