[gianmarco]

Hey All,

Found this thread very helpful. I'm a Sprint Diamond user and plan on flashing a ROM for the first time when I get home from work and plan on trying this method. Seems pretty straightforward and don't expect any problems. I do have a few questions, however, that are probably pretty silly but I've never tried it before:

1. When you flash the ROM, do you lose all of your personal info such as email settings, emails, contacts, call history, etc.?
2. If you do lose the above stuff, what's the easiest way to preserve them or to get them back? I know there are backup programs but I've never used one and don't know which is best. This is why I'm hesitant to hard reset my phone as it takes forever to get all my programs back on as well as getting work email settings, etc. back on.
3. Those of you who frequently flash custom ROMs, what is the purpose? Is it to try them out? Are there other benefits? How long does it take to get you back up and running to where you were before after flashing, restoring previous settings, etc.?
4. The main reason I want to try this now is that I have extremely limited program storage space. For some reason, Windows takes up an insane amount of the program storage space (little more than half of the 256mb). By the time I start adding programs on, I've gone from ~100mb down to 10-20mb and notice a drop in performance. I've had to delete some things I'd rather keep on just to be able to put others on. Is this going to help since the ROM is on the internal storage? Is there another way to help free up some of that space? I've looked through my folders and I don't even have much loaded there and still have very little room. Most programs I try to install on the internal storage, but some have to go on the device and I'm simply out of room.

TIA for the help and look forward to trying this soon and will report back any success/failures.