Back Up Palm Pre SMS Text & MMS Multimedia Message Attachments

Recently, I had an issue with my Palm Pre such that I needed a replacement.  I was concerned about what data I would be able to move to the new phone.  Using the phone's included Backup app takes care of most of the important stuff, including contacts.  Such profile data is backed up to Palm's servers and can be synchronized back to the new phone later.

Note:  While it may be fixed now, there has been an issue in the past whereby if a user restores a backup from a phone with a greater WebOS version, some data was not restored properly.

But what about my message conversations and file attachments?  The nice folks at the service center have a nifty little machine to backup and restore music, photos, and videos; things that are not part of the standard profile backup.  Unfortunately, this does not include message conversations and attachments (as far as I can tell).  As it turns out, you CAN back up your attachments yourself using your computer, but you may have to sacrifice your actual conversations.

Assuming you have the data cable that should have come with your Pre (which can also be used when charging your phone's battery), attach the appropriate end of the cable to your phone and plug the other end into a USB port on your computer.  Assuming all goes well, your Pre will now have popped up two buttons; USB Drive and Just Charge.  Choose USB Drive.  You know you've tapped the correct button when you see a picture of an external hard drive on your Pre.  Depending on your computer's operating system (Mac OSX, Windows, Linux), appropriate drivers should be automatically installed and once they are, the fun begins.

Navigate to your newly installed Palm USB drive and open it to see it's contents.  The next procedure will vary by operating system but the overall process is the same.  You will need to set your folder options to "show hidden files" (how to do this depends on your operating system) and once you have done that, now copy the contents to a new folder.  You've just backed up as much as the nice folks at the service center would have, plus a little bit more.  You should now have your message attachments, though you will not be able to backup and restore your actual conversations using this method.