Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Extract data from .dbk backup of Sony Xperia

Sometimes it happens that restoring from a .dbk backup fails (especially after flashing a custom ROM). You can extract data like contacts, messages etc from .dbk file as follows:


  1. Locate .dbk file. If you took backup using Sony PC Companion, Default backup folder is C:\Users\USERNAME\Documents\Sony\Sony PC Companion\Phone backups .
  2. Copy .dbk file to Desktop.
  3. Rename .dbk to .zip. Say Original file be XYZ.dbk , Rename to XYZ.zip
  4. Extract using any unzip softwares ( Eg: WinRAR, 7zip etc)
  5. In Extracted contents, See "Applications" Folder. Inside it, Each data type will have separate folders. To Extract contacts, Go inside "com.sonyericsson.android.contactsimport" folder and copy "fullbackupdata" file to Desktop. This is the compressed archive of all contacts.
  6. This "fullbackupdata" can be extracted using restoreData.jar . Download jar file from https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B4IK3kVRTwmtQkROa2s4aGx1VWc/edit. Keep jar file in same folder as "fullbackupdata". NOTE: If you cannot find restoreData.jar file at this link, Just Google it.
  7. Now run jar file. It will output a restore.tar file. Note: To run .jar file you should be having JAVA installed.
  8. This tar file can be extracted using any Unzip programs ( WinRAR, 7zip etc) . Inside you can find the full_backup_vcard.vcf VCard File which can be imported into phone contacts. Note: For importing to Phone, Copy this file to your sdcard. In phone, Go to Contacts -> import/export -> Import from storage

Credits

Johannes Deml and Nikolay Elenkov

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