The Plausibility of Backing Up / Restoring iPhone using Disk Images

[hydrostatic]

This is an offshoot of the following short-lived thread which I thought had a really good idea. I felt this thread wasn't in the right place and warranted such a re-post.
Acronis or other disk image software - Can this be utilized for iPhone backup/restore

As a hypothesis, it would seem to make sense that if one could mount the iPhone as a drive when it's in recovery or DFU mode, it would then be possible to "flash" a backup disk image to it for a full restore - unless my logic here is faulty

I suppose this process would entail using a utility (such as PhoneDisk / MacFUSE) to enable mounting of the iPhone as a storage device, then using a disk utility to create a pristine disk image of it. Then, assuming need to back up (SSH being out of the question if your iPhone is screwed up,) the iPhone could be mounted as a drive when in DFU/recovery mode, and then using the disk image to restore the iPhone/drive for a perfect restore.

Can anyone touch on the possible limitations of this? Given the way the iPhone is partitioned, is this possible at all?

I think the final trick would be mounting the iPhone as a drive while it's in recovery/DFU mode, however iTunes and the jailbreaking apps seem to be able to do this. I tried and tried using the utilities at my disposal to get the bastard to mount while in DFU/recover mode to no avail.

So anyone have some input on this? I'm new to this jailbreaking thing (sup lol) and the only downside is the lack of a snappy backup solution outside of iTunes.

[hydrostatic]

Can I get a bump?

[alek2407]

seems plausible, if you can get all the permissions to hold up,

[Frostbite]

Seems plausible, but with the current firmware, its impossible. What would be better is if you had an account on Cydia that logged all your downloads to one of suariks servers and than when you created an IPSW with Pwnagetool you entered your account and it installed all apps with the IPSW, or at least a PKGbackup system than was logged on a server. But haveing a IPSW with all your usual apps installed would make life quite a bit easier

[alek2407]

isn't there like an app that can make you a list and sync it with your computer. Also one of the jailbreak programs supports preloading apps.

Someone could make some kind of script to get the sync file, find all the apps using the modmyi app catalogue thing, and then sync them

[Frostbite]

Yes everything you said is true, but no one has built such a script hence lies the problem

[alek2407]

it doesn't seem that hard just
get app ID (the com.developer.app) > enter into Modmyi > download > add to jailbreak program

does the jailbreak program have some kind of repository system / search function?

i think you could even pull it of with a very long apple script, that is if the safari dictionary has the ability to select search boxes.