Android Device Backup Storage Repository

If you are just a normal consumer and not really particular with what applications or data is on your device, then just make sure you have the below settings set, so when you use a new android device, it will restore all your settings, applications and data onto it. I'm not sure about non-Nexus devices, but for sure it works on all my Nexus devices.

Note, for media files like video and images, it will not restore if it's local to your old device, unless you backup them on SD card or use cloud services. I will talk more about why I don't use SD card or any media storage on another post.

If you are like me, who is selective of what settings, applications and data restored to a new device, then proceed reading.

Why am I selective of stuffs restored?
Some of the applications installed are not often used. Eg. after playing "Angry Birds", it become stale to me and I don't often open it anymore. So I normally do a full backup and don't install it on my clean android device. Only if when time comes where I have the urge to play it again, then i will restore it back.
Check it yourself, how many percentage of the apps you installed, you use it every day. week and month?
Another thing, some of these apps, do consume resources in the background thus I try to minimze the number of apps. You can see the difference between when you initially had your device clean and after months with 100+ apps.

So where do I store my stuffs?
It's mostly on Box, but I do store some other stuffs spread among Google Drive, Dropbox, Google Music and Google+ .
Box : 50GB, alot of stuffs you can store
Dropbox : 5GB, this size is normally not enough for current usage. So I use this for temporary files
Google Drive : Good collaboration if you want to share your doc files with friends
Google Music : 20,000 songs free upload. Store your music files.
Google+ : Store photos but I believe it will lower your file resolution after xx number of uploads. Need to find out more
(Google Drive, Gmail, and Google+ Photos give you 15 GB of storage space for free, so you can keep your files, emails, and photos accessible from any device, anywhere.)

With regards to privacy, I try to minimize use of Google services as much as I can. It's kinda scary to see Google knows alot about you just by having photos and videos about you. So photos and personal videos are not uploaded there.

Even if you have cloud storage, it's also a hassle to do manual housekeeping and manual backup.
Next coming post is how to automate these backup.