How to Guides

How To Back Up Your iPhone

This article explains how to use iTunes to back up, update and/or restore your iPhone or iPod touch.

I know that you back up your computer..or at least you should, but what about your apple iphone.  Fact is your new smartphone carries large amounts of personal data and are subjected to life-or-death situations on a daily basis.  So, take a moment and back it up, here is how.

After just having your smartphone for a few weeks this little device would have amassed a staggering amount of your information and stuff on it, such as text messages, phone numbers, personal phone numbers and photos.  And as with your computer, you might be shocked that it may just be important to refer back to an old file or text for financial, legal or some other emergency purpose.  In the end YOU WILL FEEL BETTER AND MORE SAFE.

The apple iphone uses iTunes to create backups its settings can create backups of settings and certain other information on iPhone and iPod touch. You can use a backup to restore this information to your iPhone or iPod touch after a software restore or update, or to transfer information to a different device.

iTunes updates your iPhone's backups at every sync, which makes users' lives a bit easier, and guarantees some kind of safetly net by default. But! As with most fully automated systems, iTunes backup is kind of enigmatic. It just sort of… happens, and it's not clear what you're saving, where it's going, and how to keep it truly safe.

So what is your apple iphone doing, it is performing a full backup equivalent, inother words it is exracting all the useful bits so that if any thing happens the iphone can be restored, this includes your bookmarks, app settings, purchases, contacts, mail accounts, videos etc.  In other words pretty much everything.  So how do you revert to one of these back ups well you simply plug in your iphone, alt-click on its icon in itunes and select Restore From Backup.  Crucially this is different from selecting "RESTORE" which  reverts your iphone back to the factory default which delets all your personal data and you don't want that.

If you have configured your iPhone or iPod touch to automatically sync with iTunes on a specific computer, iTunes will back up the iPhone or iPod touch after you connect it to that computer and sync with iTunes. iTunes will not automatically back up an iPhone or iPod touch that is not configured to sync with that computer. iTunes only makes one backup each time you connect, even if you sync multiple times before disconnecting.

iTunes stores its backups as archived files in semi-cryptic directories, so if you want to pull them out of the closed iTunes system for proper backup, i.e. to an external HDD or online storage solution, you can find them here, as per Apple's useful support page on the subject:

On a Mac: ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/

On Windows XP: \Documents and Settings\(username)\Application Data\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup\

On Windows Vista: \Users\(username)\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup\

To add a backup to iTunes, simply copy it back to its default directory, and it should show up as a restore option, labeled by date, when you're setting up a wiped or recently capital "R" Restored iPhone or iPod Touch.

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