I had a copy of Dragon Quest 8 on my Android phone. I wasn’t really enjoying playing on the tiny phone, and wanted to delete it to free up the space is was taking up. Ideally I wanted to transfer my save file to another device. Normally this would be very easy – the newest version of the app has a cloud saving feature. However, I had the free version given away by Amazon from four years ago. Since it was on the Amazon store, it hasn’t been updated and probably won’t ever be updated. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It seemed like the save files were kept somewhere secure on the phone. It wasn’t anywhere I could see from the file manager. However, I wasn’t excited to root my phone, since a lot of the guides seemed to have erasing the phone to be a first step. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I had some luck with the android debugger. With my phone plugged in, I was able to run <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This took me several tries to actually get a complete backup. My first attempt resulting in an empty file, and subsequent attempts resulted in partial files. Since my phone was encrypted, I need to set a desktop backup password on the phone before it would allow the backup to happen. The partial files happened because I tried to backup the entire APK, and the phone was disconnected before I finished the lengthy process. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I was able to open the file with Restoring the save files didn’t work with adb. I tried To actually transfer the files, I copied the saves in the Download folder since that was easy to use, and then used a cp command in the shell to move them where I wanted them to go. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Problem I had a copy of Dragon Quest 8 on my Android phone. I wasn’t really enjoying playing on the tiny phone, and wanted to delete it to free up the space is was taking up. Ideally I wanted … Continue reading $ adb backup -f dragon_quest.ab com.square_enix.android_kindle.DQVIII_K<\/code><\/p>\n\n\n\n$java -jar abe-all.jar unpack dragon_quest.ab dragon_quest.tar 'password'<\/code> using Android Backup Extrator<\/a>. This gave me an archive where I could see the save files. <\/p>\n\n\n\nadb restore dragon_quest.ab<\/code> but got nowhere. I never figured out how to do it. Instead, I got lucky with the android shell. I was able to find a directory on my tablet called \/sdcard\/Android\/data\/com.square_enix.android_kindle.DQVIII_K\/files<\/code> which contained the save files. I cannot see these files or even the folder from the file manager or when I connect the device to the computer. I don’t know if this is some type of merged file system of secure and insecure files, or if there are different permissions between the adb shell and the file manager apps. I believe I could have found the files in this way on my phone, but I have already deleted the app. <\/p>\n\n\n\n