Complex back up and restore help needed - GMail account corrupted & LOST permanently

[spudbrown79]

Hi,
This is my first post, and it's a doozy. I have a Motorola Droid and have had it for 6 months. It was synced at set up with my Gmail account. Since then my gmail account was corrupted and irretrievably CLOSED thanks to Google. I can no longer get any emails, and can not access the droid app marketplace for any software updates. I can not recover the email address, I've tried. I seem to have several problems now related to my phone: I understand I have to wipe the phone and re-set everything and link it to my new gmail account. Before I do that:

1. My contacts, which are still OK on my phone, were linked to that gmail account. I do have a Gmail new account, but if I do a backup/restore will I lose them since they're not attached to my old account? I did an export to my SD card, if I save them off to my PC do i need to do anything else? Are they safe? Do I just copy them back onto my new wiped phone when i get to that point?

2. My SMS messages, I have some that I must keep (most can be discarded), and I do not have SMS back up (but will install it next time after i do a wipe on my phone, you bet!). What safe options do i have for saving and restoring these? I can't get to the app marketplace to download the SMS back up, and I've read other posts which indicate downloading from the internet is not as safe. If that's not true, what is the best place to look for the SMS back up app, just google it?

If i copy/paste/forward then i lose the ability to verify the sender and date/time information, so that doesn't seem to be an option for me, right?

3. Related question to #2, is there a safe/easy way to back up my apps without being able to access new apps from the marketplace to do it? Or should I just bite the bullet, wipe the phone and start over? The apps are not as important as the contacts and SMS messages mentioned above.

Any other tips, tricks, or watchouts for restoring to factory and starting over? I've been perusing the threads here and have found several that related to part of my problem but not all in its' entirety and wanted to throw the whole problem out there before I tried to proceed.

Thanks MUCH in advance for any help anyone can provide!!

 

[th9203]

A suggestion

Go to your friendly local Verizon store, present your problem to them and have them work with you to correct/restage/update your email accounts.

This is a tough one to go through step by step even with all of the "wise men" (sorry ladies, it is Cristmas eve) on this board.

In the future - back up everything from your Google accounts on your PC. Search for "export" functionality on your Google accout.

 

[Bullitt6996]

"1. My contacts, which are still OK on my phone, were linked to that gmail account. I do have a Gmail new account, but if I do a backup/restore will I lose them since they're not attached to my old account? I did an export to my SD card, if I save them off to my PC do i need to do anything else? Are they safe? Do I just copy them back onto my new wiped phone when i get to that point?"
:blackdroid:-For this, all you need to do is delete the previous google account from your accounts in the phone. Once you do that, go to "add account" and enter the new one. That outta work. The SD card method doesn't always work, but you could also get "Lookout" Mobile Security from the market. It's free and you can use the new email acct info to sign up. This will also back up your contacts.

SMS: For this you can contact verizon for printed copies of the text messages if you really need them. If you don't have a lot, forward them to an email address for safe keeping, thats the only method I trust myself.:blackdroid:

Apps: For backing these up, "Titanium Backup" is a good method, also available on the market. The pro version is like 5 bucks but worth it as this is exactly what it does. If you don't want to use the market, the only real option other than titanium is to just re-download them to your phone after you do your reset. They can be redownloaded if you go to your "downloads" on the market.

Lastly, your "factory reset", if you're not rooted, just do a battery pull, anything past that, unless you're rooted or plan on rooting, I would take up with a tech dude at your local verizon store. Good luck dude:blackdroid:

 

[tranz]

Spud,
What's happenin? Can you tell us what you've done to recover?

I'm also curious about how your gmail account got "corrupted and closed". I mean the reason I got this Droid instead of buying a supply of Treos off ebay was for "the cloud" so I COULDN'T lose anything as valuable as my contacts and calendar!

Any insights to help the rest of us avoid such a trainwreck will certainly be appreciated.