Ripping a rom...
 

Hello again. I've been reading a lot about ROM's and how to cook them... but it's always someone else's ROM I'm cooking and I do not feel comfortable with that quite yet, at least without a backup of my own ROM.

This brings me to my question, the one I've used the search function for so sorry if it's been answered already.

How do I rip the ROM from my OWN phone? Not just the ext_ROM though, the whole thing.

Not only could I back up my phone with this... I could also have a clean version of my ROM to tinker with. :p (I know it won't be 3.3 AKU, but I might end up waiting for Crossbow).

Thanks in advance. :)

Download the latest official upgrade from your carrier. Use Winrar to extract the installer. Once extracted, you should find 3 files. The are nk.nbf(the rom), ms_.nbf(the ExtRom), and radio.nbf(the radio). Now you can use the nk.nbf to create your own "clean" rom.

See this post here for detailed instructions on cooking.

I appreciate the responses, but I was asking about the ROM which currently resides in my phone.

How do I extract that for backup?

As far as I know you can't extract the rom from your phone. If you want to back up your phone and all its software/reg tweaks/ect use SPB Backup or some other backup software.

Actually you can extract a ROM from a phone, but its only useful if you have lost the ROM file you flashed (and it's somewhat complicated).

Doing a dump from a phone doesn't get you any of your configuration (which is all stored on a separate partition even though it doesn't appear that way when you browse the file system)--it just gets the ROM contents, which are all in the \Windows folder. Nothing else would appear in the dump.

Anyway, as dannzeman said though, use SPB Backup. Just keep in mind that in order to properly restore you must be on the same ROM level. So if your backup comes from an AKU 2.x installation and you flash on a custom 3, you will get nothing but grief trying to restore onto that. You would need to reflash the AKU 2.x ROM, then you can restore your backup.

I know that is probably confusing because PCs don't really work that way. But these devices keep the \Windows folder and everything else totally separate. You can't back up both things at the same time (or even with the same software). The ROM flash puts on your OS and core apps, and then the backup software handles all of the other stuff.