If you’ve had trouble with your iPhone or accidently whipped away all the settings that you spent hours setting up then you must have been grateful for Apple’s iPhone backup feature. You may have noticed that every time you sync your iPhone iTunes creates a backup copy and stores it on your Mac for the “Just in Case Something Bad Happens” situations.
Restore an iPhone Backup
While iTunes automatically backs up your iPhone each time it is synced, restoring the backup is just a few clicks away. To restore your iPhone to a backup version:
- Open iTunes with your iPhone connected to your Mac
- Right Click on your iPhone
- Select Restore From Backup
- Select your backup from the drop down and click restore
From here iTunes will restore your contacts, calendars, text messages, and settings.
Restoring old versions of your Backup
Restoring backups of your iPhone takes just a few clicks, but iTunes often only shows your most recent backup as an option to restore from. If you ever want to restore your Older backups then you’ll need the assistance of Time Machine and Time Capsule
If you’re not already backing up your system, you may want to utilize this incredible thin mini external hard drive. It has enough space to backup significant amounts of data and will work great in backing up your iPhone.
iTunes stores your backup files in a folder at this location: /Users/[username]/Library/Application Support/MobileSynce/Backup. In this folder will be an additional folder or two. These folders contain all the data on your iPhone settings.
If you want to restore your iPhone to a backup you created 3 months ago, navigate to the location listed above, select the folder and open Time Machine. Navigate back 3 months and then click restore.
After Time Machine has finished restoring your Backup Folder, follow the steps listed above to Restore your iPhone Backup.
While Time Machine is a great feature in OS X Leopard and above, I’ve personally had two external hard drives fail while being used for backups. Luckily, I had previously backed up online my data to keep things safe. Online Backup works great for restoring data, like your iPhone Backups and allows you to have extra piece of mind while keeping your data safe. Best of all, with companies like Mozy, online backup is cheap. I’ve used it to restore data and its quick, easy, and the software on the PC and Mac runs in the background without getting in the way. Check it out, back up your data, and be ready for the next time you need to restore your iPhone backups, even if Time Machine isn’t.
