Backup Your iPhone on Windows
iPhones are no doubt the latest fad in technology, but if you lose your iPhone it frequently disrupts your life more than the actual monetary loss of the phone. Losing all your music, saved videos, contacts and notes can be quite unnerving for people who very much depend on their iPhone for day to day contacts and entertainment. Music, applications, videos, photos, e mail account settings, podcasts, ringtones, notes, contacts, bookmarks and calendars can all be copied on to your computer from an iPhone through iTunes. This facility creates a complete backup of information on the iPhone. Once you have this backup you can use this stored information to restore data on your iPhone or even transfer it to another device.
Software Applications for Backups
iTunes is a media player application that is use to organize all music and video files that are in digital form. It can also manage the content on iPod media players as well as the iPhone. iTunes will keep only one backup for each device which it has created during the sync process. So if you want to go back in time and access data that you had synced previously, you would need to have saved this previous data on any other backup device that you have. Even if you restore the iPhone and set up as a newer device, iTunes will automatically create a new blank backup and delete previously stored data. The information stored on your computer by iTunes can be encrypted for security reasons. This needs a password if the information has to be retrieved. There is no system to recover your password if you do forget it, and this may result in losing all your data. So using the encryption facility has to be exercised with care. The location of the folder that has your backup data will depend on your computer’s operating system, and this should be periodically included in any data backup routine that you have, as iTunes will save only one backup per iPhone. There are certain fixed places where the backup file will be placed depending on whether you are using a Mac or the Windows XP or Windows Vista on your computer.
The Process
You can configure the iPhone to sync with iTunes on a computer. So once you connect up to the computer and go to the iTunes screen you can sync and create a backup automatically. Configuration to sync with the computer is a must for this. Always remember that you will have only one backup for your iPhone. Whenever you update the software iTunes will back up the iPhone automatically. You can reset your iPhone to factory settings and use the Setup your iPhone screen to restore data from the backup onto your iPhone. This data is then used for further syncing when you again connect your iPhone to the computer. But remember the next time you sync this backup will be replaced by the latest data and will not be retained.
To retain copies of backups you would have to create separate files as per normal backup routines. These copies can be then used to restore data on you iPhones by accessing “restore from the backup of” item on the menu. These backups will continue to remain on the computer as long as you want to retain them. You therefore need to date and organize them correctly.
You can delete a backup created by iTunes by going to Edit and then to Preferences. iTunes will indicate the IMEI and serial number of the phones that it has backed up. You can then select the correct one and ask iTunes to delete that backup.
Note: When creating backup of your iPhone, make sure you have the latest version of iTunes installed on your system. At present, the latest version of iTunes is 10.1. This way you can always ensure that your iPhone data is secure at all times.
If you are using MAC and want to transfer files from iPhone to your computer, read the following tutorial.
<strong>How to Transfer Files from Mac to iPhone</strong>
If you are looking to jailbreak your iPhone 4 with 4.2.1 firmware, you can always refer to this tutorial
<strong>How to Jailbreak and Unlock 4.2.1 Firmware on iPhone 3G, 3GS and iPhone 4</strong>
