Backup Guide

Before flashing AsteroidOS to your watch to replace WearOS, we advise to make a complete backup.

Manual backup method

1. Temporarily install AsteroidOS

   Follow the install instructions for a temporary installation. Once booted into AsteroidOS, we can enable SSH or ADB with root access to all partitions on the internal storage.

2. Enable SSH or ADB

   Open the settings app and the USB page. Select SSH Mode to enable SSH. Or ADB Mode to use ADB connection.

3. Copy mmcblk0 into a local image file
   • Backup using SSH and dd

   Navigate to a folder where you want to store the backup. Or add a full path before the image name (after of=) in the next command.

   ssh root@19#16##15 "dd if=/dev/mmcblk0" | dd "of=watch-backup.img" bs=4096 status=progress

   • Backup using ADB

   adb pull /dev/mmcblk0 watch-backup.img

The copy process might take up to an hour on watches with 8GB of storage.

Scripted backup and restore

Beroset has written a set of tools to make working with watches from a Linux computer very convenient. This backup guide will only cover the backup and restore features of asteroid-hosttools. Please be sure to read the asteroid-hosttools documentation to make use of the full capabilities they provide.

1. Clone asteroid-hosttools

   Clone the asteroid-hosttools using the following command:

   git clone https://github.com/beroset/asteroid-hosttools

   And change into the asteroid-hosttools directory:

   cd asteroid-hosttools

2. Temporarily install AsteroidOS

   Adapt <watch-codename> in the following commands according to your watches codename listed on the Watches page. I.e dory for the LG G Watch or sturgeon for the Huawei Watch.

   ./flashy <watch-codename> --temp --nightly

3. Backup the entire watch

   Following command will create a file called original-<watch-codename>.img.

   ./watch-image <watch-codename> --save

4. Restore a backup

   To restore the backup image created in step 3, make sure the original-<watch-codename>.img file exists.

   Then issue the restore command:

   ./watch-image <watch-codename> --restore