I still use my N810 daily, and it seems from this forum that others do too. But it's probably going to get harder to do standard restore operations using repositories, as some of them start to go offline.

I developed a fairly straightforward backup/restore process. I can have my full configuration up and running on a new N810 within about an hour, without even going online.

Posted here in case it's of use to anyone. As usual, no warranties, DYOR, be careful, bear in mind this works for me but might not for you.

(the rsync and sudser deb install files are attached if you need them)

AlexC

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Backup:

Making an archive of the internal or external memory card is straightforward: just use your favourite zip, 7z, whatever tool to archive the files on them. But backing up the active internal drive is potentially more tricky. Here's how I do it:

1. Format an Ext2 miniSD card, at least 512MB. Insert it into the N810.

2. Reboot the N810.

3. Open a terminal window.

4. Gain root, however you normally would.

5. Type these two commands:

mkdir /media/mmc1/n810_backup
rsync -axHAXv --delete --progress / /media/mmc1/n810_backup/

6. Wait a while.

7. Reboot and repeat the rsync command, so it catches a few more files that might have been locked first time around.

8. Switch off, remove the memory card, put it in your PC and tar the n810_backup directory as an archive (mine's called full_backup.tar).

9. That's it.

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Bare metal restore:

1. Reflash the N810 with Nokia's clean image using either the Windows flasher or flasher-3.5 under Linux. In Linux, do flasher-3.5 -F RX44-Diablo-blah.bin -f -R and that should do it. Remember to switch the N810 on while holding the top 'swap' button on the front, to get it in USB mode.

2. Restore (if necessary) the contents of 'internal_memory_card_backup.zip' to mmc2.

3. Restore (if necessary) the contents of 'external_memory_card_backup.zip' to mmc1.

4. Expand (under Linux) the full_backup.tar onto an Ext2-formatted memory card. Put the card in the N810.

5. Install rsync and its dependencies, either locally or from online. If locally, you will have to enable R&D mode on the tablet first (using flasher-3.5 --enable-rd-mode -R when connected to a Linux machine) and then do 'dpkg -i rsync/*.deb' as root, because for some reason it won't install through the application manager and you can't get root any other way on a bare machine, unless you install 'sudser', 'rootsh' or similar from online. Though you could first try the 'sudser' .deb file; double-click on it in File Manager, and if it installs you can then use 'rush' to get root and then use dpkg to install rsync.

6. Restore as root using rsync:
rsync -axHAXv --delete --progress /media/mmc1/n810_backup/ /

7. Reboot. When restoring to bare metal you should do rsync, then reboot, then do it again, then reboot, and then do it again. Maybe more. This increases the number of files that are sync'd and makes the restore more accurate.

8. Flash the kernel to the Community SSU version [or whatever version you're currently using]. If in doubt, use dpkg --extract to get the zImage_blah file itself, then fiasco-flasher -f -k zImage_blah.

9. Add Diablo Turbo if you like.

10. That's it.