lost backup data
 

My Galaxy S5 has gone bad and Verizon wanted me to do a factory reset on my phone before replacing it. I had went through the backup process of sending myself a backup file but it would seem the backup file failed to send. The latest backup file I have in my google drive is over a year old. I was always saving my backups to my SD card so I wouldn't have these problems but come to find out they haven't been happening since Acar changed the program to store backups on just the device storage! Is there a way to retrieve this data after a factory reset? Also, if I was backing up all my apps to google would the acar app still have the last saved data file in it? I'm desperate here as I've lost 5 years of records for 3 cars so any help from anyone would be appreciated beyond words!!!

As far as I know, aCar has always had automatic backups to the local storage.
Pro users had the option to manually send backups to SD card, or a cloud service like Dropbox/Drive, etc.

When you mentioned sending yourself a backup file but it failed to send; did you email it? Is it possible you sent it to an alternate address?

had mine set to auto backup to the SD card but if you go to zonewalker.com they say that because people were getting confused they moved the saves to the device storage. If it's on my SD card then someone here at fuelly needs to let me know what the file is since they own the app now. I've sent to emails requesting help and I haven't heard a word from them!

Sorry about not responding to your Help Ticket. I'm currently backlogged at the Help Desk. But I'm happy to help you here.

I spoke with Armond (owner of Zonewalker/Developer of aCar) and he said automatic backups are only set to Local Storage.
If you moved them to your SD card, the file type is .ABP, and in a timestamp format for the file name.
If you moved the entire directory, the folder name is "/zonewalker-acar".
I hope this helps you locate any backups you may have.

Also, my previous question wasn't answered- When you mentioned sending yourself a backup file but it failed to send; did you email it? Is it possible you sent it to an alternate address?

my fault on the email question, but no, it didn't go to any of my email addresses, it failed to send the back up so that's why I don't have it anymore. Thought it sent so that's when I did the factory restore that Verizon wanted to do. Armond changed Acar backups to local storage in some update as it used to allow for automatic backups to SD storage then if you read on his site he changed it to only local storage. I didn't know it was a forced change and that it would dig into my phone and actually move the backup files to local storage. So I'm back to my original question I suppose, is there a back up file stored anywhere else on my phone besides locally? and would the old SD backup file still exist even after the change was made whenever he made it?

Can you plug the SD card in and view the files/folders stored on it?

yes but I don't see a folder for zonewalker if that's what we're hoping for! LOL. But seriously, yes I can look at it mounted in the phone or put it in my computer card reader and look at everything on it.

Any files that end in .abp?

I'm so sorry for your data loss.

Some technical background about storage mapping:
Android only provides one API to access the "external storage" of the device. But don't get wrong with the "external" term. It all depends to device manufacturer on how they want to map it. In the very old days of Android (1.x), manufacturers tended to map this external storage to the SD-Card. But after a while (Android > 2.x), the situation changed. Most of the manufacturers started introducing larger internal memories and even some dropped the SD-Card support... It was when they started "mapping" this "external storage" concept to the "internal storage" on their devices.

In all these years aCar was only using the only official API that Android has provided to access the device storage, to store the backup files, and nothing has changed here.

The end result is that on very old devices (Android 1.x), the backups were being stored on the SD-Card but after Android 2.0 was introduced, this mostly changed to the internal storage. And it was not a consistent move among all device manufacturers and on all of their models, but in a year most of the devices being introduced were using their internal storage instead.

If you refer to the FAQ screen of aCar, you will notice this QA:
Q: I have already taken a backup of my data (or exported them), but I don't know where the files are stored!
A: They are all stored in "zonewalker-acar" directory on the local storage of your phone/tablet (either on the SD-Card or on the internal storage depending on the device brand and model).

What has come in parentheses is a non-technical and simplified form of what I explained above.

Now the answer to your question... Since the current versions of aCar heavily relies on the backup files on your local device and we do not store any copy of your data on our servers, if you don't have access to one of your recent backups, I'm sorry to say that you're out of luck.

But one thing I would like to know about is how aCar failed to send a copy of your backed up data to you. Did you try to email? If yes, did it fail and did you get any error message?
And if one method (say email) failed, did you try to use Google Drive, Dropbox or any other cloud based service to store your backup file there? These are all supported ways for storing a copy of your valuable data out of your phone/tablet.

Thank you for the explanation, not what I wanted to hear but the facts nevertheless! LOL. Anyway, to your question on the backup failing to send. I don't believe it was Acar's fault I think it was within my phone. I sent it to my main email and thought I was set because I didn't see it say it failed to send. So, it must have just sat in my outbox on my phone and never got sent. Unfortunately I went ahead with the factory reset not checking my email to make sure I had it because my computer was getting some work done on it at the same time as my phone issues. I never tried to send another backup to any other email before the reset. Tried to send one after the reset as a test and it twice failed. Then I sent a backup with a different email program and it went through just fine but obviously with no data. So the fault lies with me and not the program, the only I can say is that when the app was changed to device storage there should have been a notice sent that this was changing and not assumed users would know it was happening. Either way, what's done is done, it's a great app, love it and will continue to use it. Just chalk this one up to a life lesson!!!!