How To: Load Android 2.1 onto the Motorola Droid Using Nandroid

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UPDATE: THIS PROCEDURE NEEDS TO BE UPDATED. WILL GET TO IT BY THE END OF THIS WEEK!

So you gained root access and are happily using Root required apps from the Market? Ready to take the next step and reap the benefits?

Well the next step would be to dabble in custom ROMs. Currently there aren’t very many for the Droid but there will be more and more, we promise 🙂

Now this is not the normal way of loading a ROM through the recovery image. Instead we are loading the ROM through Nandroid backup in the recovery image (we are forced to do this until someone comes up with a recovery image that will allow us to flash a new ROM directly from the recovery image).

Here is how to load the custom ROM through Nandroid once you have rooted your Motorola Droid.

I. Before You Begin

1. YOU MUST HAVE ROOT ACCESS FIRST! Please goto the How To Root the Motorola Droid procedure first. Once you are done there, you can come back to this procedure.

II. Load the Custom ROM Through Nandroid

1. Plug the phone into your computer via USB. Pull down the notification bar and click on the Mount USB button.

2. On your computer Navigate to the SD card of your phone. Then open the Nandroid folder on the SD card.

3. Select all of the files within the folder (hold shift to select more than one at a time) and copy them to a folder on your computer for a backup.

4. Once you have copied everything to the computer, delete all of the files inside the Nandroid folder on the SD.

5. Download the Nandroid ROM of Android 2.1

Android 2.1 for Droid (Updated 01.02.10!)

6. Unzip the .zip you just downloaded and then take all of the contents and put them into the Nandroid folder on your SD card.

7. Disconnect the phone from the computer.

8. Turn off the phone and then turn it back on into recovery mode by holding down X (on the physical keyboard) and the power button until the recovery screen comes up.

9. Plug the phone into the computer (while in recovery mode).

10. Open the command prompt on your computer and then type the following into it (with hitting enter at the end of each line):

cd C:\AndroidSDK\tools\

*This above line assumes you did our How To Setup ADB procedure as the folder for the SDK was renamed to AndroidSDK in that procedure and placed on the C drive.

adb shell
format DATA:
format SYSTEM:
format CACHE:

11. Then on the phone’s recovery screen. Select Restore Nandroid backup to flash the ROM we put in the Nandroid folder on the SD.

12. Reboot via the recovery image. All done! Enjoy!

Thanks Greek45T!
Thanks Pedro for sending it in!

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  • Y314K

    Welcome back,

    Hope everything is fine…

    I would say we missed you but that would be kind of girly… But we did miss u… Although we won’t say it… lol

    • Y314K,

      Ha thanks! I appreciate it!
      Been super busy and then with the spike I got from people randomly linking to the pics I had, I had to move the site to a new server… again… lol So that headache took a while too.
      Back though, gonna get back to working on the site hardcore on Tuesday… have any suggestions for How Tos or site suggestions use the Contact Us and let me know, love to here from you! I’d say thanks for sticking around but that would be girly lol

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  • Joey

    A little confused about what nandroid is? do you have a how to on that?

    • Joey,

      Just do the procedure as it is written (after you do the How To Root the Droid procedure). You don’t need to know what it is to do this procedure 🙂

      Just so you know though, Nandroid is an app that works from inside the recovery screen to backup and restore your phone. This procedure uses that ability to “restore” a 2.1 backup of the Droid onto your phone there by upgrading it, make sense?

      Good luck!

  • chow22

    Wow, i can’t wait to use it. i’ve seen the youtube video.. thanks alot unlockr and Greek45t

  • Matt

    Unlockr,

    In your two sets of instructions pertaining to the Droid, in either of those was a recovery image made of ones phone before the upgrade to 2.1? If so is there a “How To” on restoring to a previous image or rom?

    I just want to make sure that a recovery image is made and there is instructions how to “go back” before I give this a try.

    Thanks in advance!

    • Matt,

      You’ll see in the second procedure (this one) that we take the backup that Nandroid automatically made and save it to the computer. You can use this backup later to go back if you want.
      Just don’t continue past that step until you are sure you have the Nandroid backup saved to your computer and you should be fine.
      Good luck!

  • Matt

    Wow, I totally missed that part when reading through. Thanks for the very prompt response.

  • ej

    the link to 5. Download the Nandroid ROM of Android
    2.1 is reporting, “Invalid or Deleted File”

    http://www.mediafire.com/file/yguzz11m2no/BCDMRS-20091219-1559.zip

    Any help? Thanks!

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  • Eric

    Hi,
    Everything is set up for me to load the ROM through Nandroid, but everytime I start my phone in recovery mode and type adb shell, it says “device not attached”, but when my phone is started up regulary and attached, I can see my phones serial in ABD.

    Any help would be great! I really want to try 2.1!

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  • Brett

    I did the nandroid backup to flash the 2.1 rom and then no recovery image came up? now I have just the motorola symbol the phone wont load any suggestions?

    • Brett,

      Boot back into recovery and reload.

  • theXeffect

    hey how do i get this on my milestone…..please help….

  • theXeffect

    im rooted n im on 2.0….but it hard to get nandroid backup on mine….is it different……when i try to use termina flashing recovery image from droid my bootload gets an err….help….help….

  • mike

    Great writeup, but it doesnt work for me. If i put my phone in recovery mode, my pc will not see the device and install drivers. It will if I boot into SPRecovery mode (holding up instead of X) or when the android OS is fully loaded, but not from the recovery mode ( X ). i definitely have the right drivers but i re-installed them anyway. I’m using win7-x64. not sure if that has anything to do with it. Anybody else having this problem? when i start adb shell while in recovery mode, daemon starts successfully but i get ‘error: device not found’

    • Mike,

      Sorry these procedure needs to be updated (doing it this week).

  • mike

    i was mistaken. windows 7 recognizes my motroloa a855 as i can see it appears in the devices and printers control box when plugged in while in recovery mode (x). it is only the sdk 1.5 that doesnt recognize it as plugged in…

    error: device not found

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