How To Backup Your Palm

Photo by Olly M Pus

Why backup?

No device is infallible. All it takes is one bounce on the floor, one battery drain, or prolonged heat exposure, and your PDA could be toast. In my case, all it took was inserting an SD card. Kaboom!

I discovered something important that day: the importance of backups.

Shortfalls of Hotsync

One thing I hear people say time and again is that they don’t need to back up because they Hotsync their data daily. This has two drawbacks:

1. If you do not have immediate access to your Hotsync computer, you will not be able to restore anything
2. Hotsync doesn’t back everything up

Yes, you read that right. Certain applications do not automatically save their data locally during a Hotsync; only those with conduits. I found this out the hard way when I restored from a Hotsync, only to lose my ReDo and LookAtMe data outright. And it took days for me to find the rest of the application data that needed to go back on.

Programs for backing up

There are many options for backing up your PDA, particularly if you have a Treo. One of the things I looked for in a package was that it had to backup to an SD card. One of the times I lost my power was at the start of a big trip, and I lost all the notes I had taken regarding places to visit. I personally use BackupBuddy (not affiliated, just a happy customer).

Restoring when you don’t have a full backup

But what if you don’t have a backup and you have to restore? Here are the steps you can take to recover most of your data from a Hotsync.

1. First, set your conduits to overwrite the PDA from the desktop. This should restore most big things, like your date book, contacts and to do lists.
2. Next, see what is missing by doing a visual inventory of your PDA.
3. Look for missing programs in your Palm/Hotsync name directories. Some ones to check are Archive, Backup, and any directories placed there by applications. Missing files will have a .PDB or .PRC extension.
4. Install these found files by double-clicking on them, which should pop them into your Hotsync install manager.
5. Hotsync again.

This should restore most everything; but remember that not everything will restore. Good luck!