Establishing and maintaining a backup of mobile phone user media files

This is the procedure for establishing and maintaining a backup of user media files, such as pictures, movies and songs, that are stored on a mobile phone. It is assumed, that USB is used.

In our example, we will use a Nokia 5300 mobile phone and an Ubuntu computer.

Attach the USB cable to the phone and to the computer. If the phone does not respond to this, unplug the cable, turn the phone off, turn the phone on and try again. When the phone responds, select data transfer. On the Ubuntu computer, a dialog appears. Select Cancel.

Now, that the connection is established and the mobile phone is mounted, we can do the data transfer. We ensure, that the backup directory exist, and copy all changes between the mobile phone and the backup directory using rsync.

This means, that the first run will take more time than the following runs, and, that deleted files on the mobile phone will be deleted on the computer.

mkdir -p -m 0700 ~/nokia_5300
rsync -a --delete /media/disk ~/nokia_5300
umount /media/disk


This procedure does not replace the Nokia PC Suite backup procedure for the mobile phone, which also copies calender, messages, internal settings and more.

Print Friendly