Last week BlackBerry Messenger 5.0 was leaked and many were able to download it without a problem. Some, though, did run into some problems and did not make a backup, causing them to lose their BBM contacts.

I was actually surprised at the amount of people who did not know how to make a backup of their BlackBerry, so I decided to put together a guide with screenshots of how to do it.

Having a recent backup is important because if anything goes wrong and you lose address book contacts, messages, custom settings, custom words and more, you can easily restore it and it will be back as if they were never gone. Regular backups only include data, not applications, ringtones, wallpapers, etc.

There is a different kind of backup (which I will do a guide for also) which allows you to backup 3rd party applications in case your BlackBerry ever crashes and you don’t feel like installing every app one-by-one. For now though, I will show you how to backup and restore your BlackBerry and explain what the Advanced Backup and Restore option is for. Click the link below for the full guide.

How To: Backup And Restore Your BlackBerry