How to Back Up Your iPhone

Posted on July 15th, 2009 by Marck

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The iPhone is one of the most interesting gadgets not only for making calls and sending short messages, but it is also an all-in-one tool for music, mobile Internet, and entertainment. Yet like all gadgets, the iPhone can experience software failure. One way that you can retrieve your data and programs in case your iPhone fails is to use a backup.

Sync and Backup

Before backing up your iPhone, it is important to know the difference between a sync and a backup. Both functions serve to protect the data present on your iPhone in case of data loss, but they serve two very different purposes:

Sync. The Sync function assumes that iTunes is synchronized with one iPod, iTouch, or iPhone, to ensure that the data in the product is the same as the content of the synchronized library.
Backup. Every time you sync your iPhone with iTunes, the program will automatically create one backup for the content found in your iPhone. The backup will be overwritten when you sync your iPhone again.

iTunes backs up pretty much everything in your iPhone, from software to applications and phone contacts. You should back up your iPhone every now and then to ensure the security of your data just in case the device fails.

Tools

To backup your iPhone, you need the following tools:

iTunes, with the latest updates and patches
A computer running either Mac OS X, Windows XP, or Windows Vista
iPhone, with the USB connector peripheral

Steps

Making a backup of your iPhone software and data is very easy:

Connect your iPhone to your computer and wait for iTunes to load automatically. (If you did not configure your computer to engage AutoRun every time you connect an external storage device, activate iTunes manually.) You should see the iPhone icon on the “Devices” pane of iTunes.
Right-click the iPhone icon (or use Control + click if you’re using a Mac), and click “Back Up.”
iTunes will back up your iPhone automatically.

Backup Locations

The location of your iPhone backup files depends on your operating system:

On Windows Vista: \Users\(your username)\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup
On Windows XP: \Documents and Settings\(your username)\Application Data\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup
On Mac OS X: /Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup

It may also help to make a few copies of your iTunes backup file into separate directories to ensure the integrity of your data.