Tag: Backup »

With text messages and iMessages being such an important form of communication between people, it doesn’t make much sense that there’s no easy way to store them and back them up. They’re backed up when making backups through iTunes or iCloud, but if you have to wipe your device clean, then they’re lost forever. And because of the personal and private nature of these messages, important ones can be lost, unlike email which exists on cloud servers. Now, there is a way to backup your SMS and iMessages manually. Note that this guide will require you to be at a computer with iTunes, and to poke around some hidden directories. If you’re comfortable with this, let’s begin.

Start by making a full manual backup in iTunes of your device. Re-read our previous guide on backing up your device on how to do this.

Now then, the fun part. We need to go into where the backup is stored. On Windows PCs, this location has to be accessed by opening a local Explorer window, and typing in %APPDATA% (a shortcut to your Windows primary hard drive’s Users/[your username]/Application Data folder). On Mac, open up a Finder window. Hold down the Option key, click Go in the top bar, and select the Library folder that now appears. It only appears when you hold down the Option key. The necessary folder will not be visible if you just go to the Library folder from your Mac on the left sidebar in Finder. Open Application Support.

Now, on either OS, open up MobileSync -> Backup. Open up the most recent folder, as that should be your latest backup.

Look for a file called 3d0d7e5fb2ce288813306e4d4636395e047a3d28. It may or may not have a file extension on it. Copy this file to a safe place.

Now, if you just open it up in a text editor, the file will be full of gibberish but you can search for text strings and they will pop up. It’s largely unreadable, but it’s something.

Now, if you want them available in a readable format, this can be done. Go to http://iphone-sms.com. Upload that file you just saved, and choose an export format. Note that you are uploading your message data to a remote website, so if you’re concerned about the privacy of your data, you might want to be careful, though there’s no known risk factors with the site. Also, the file doesn’t include picture data, so you might want to save those to your Camera Roll manually.

So, that’s how you get your SMS and iMessages backed up. It’s not easy, but it’s a way to preserve your treasured messages. Or not-so-treasured ones. Such is the beauty of text messaging.

It’s that most magical time of year: the time before a new iPhone launches. This means that for many people, it’s time to sell that old phone to buy the new one. For those looking to ditch their phone, here’s three handy tips to make sure everything goes smoothly in transitioning to the iPhone 5.

Make Sure the Phone is Backed Up

There’s no real need to start fresh with any missing contacts or apps when using a new iPhone. Follow our handy guide to setting up backups via iCloud or iTunes. Then, when the new iPhone is purchased, simply restore to the backup of that phone. On iTunes, this is just as simple as selecting the device from the list when choosing what to restore from. For iCloud backups, make sure to log in to the same iCloud account when restoring on the new device. It may be a good idea to note which iCloud account is being used on your old iPhone. Remember as well that backups are cross-compatible, so even an iPod touch backup could be used to restore to the new iPhone

Make Sure the Phone is Erased.

No one wants to accidentally hand over a phone with all their contacts, saved payment information in apps, and their most embarassing photos to a stranger or even worse: a family member! Thankfully, erasing a device is easy. Just go to Settings -> General -> Reset and choose Erase All Content and Settings. This will erase all user data on the phone. Make sure it’s backed up first! This will leave it in a state where it will be possible to restore to a new device. If you’re selling it to someone you don’t know, you may want to set it up as a new device just so they can test the features out, while showing how to erase it so they can set it up themselves, possibly even from a backup they made!

Sell Securely

A website like Gazelle or a store like GameStop may make it easy to sell the phone quickly and securely, but this will not net as much as selling it directly to another person will. Selling via eBay or Craigslist is a good way to quickly sell the phone, but it comes with the inherent risk of dealing with strangers. Hold on to the original receipt if possible in order to ensure that you have proof that you purchased it in case someone tries to claim that the phone was stolen. Especially log your phone’s IMEI or ESN, a phone's unique identifying number, if possible, as it is what the carriers use to track stolen phones. Here's how to find this information on the iPhone itself. Having a log of this may help if a scammer tries to claim you sold them a stolen phone.

Good luck out there!

Western Digital has released a couple new home network drives, the My Book and My Book Duo, drives that will help you create your own personal cloud of up to 3 terabytes. That's a lot of vacation photos.

And what's really cool about these drives is that you can really access them like your own personal cloud. With the mobile apps you can access and add data to them from anywhere you have a connection.

The My Book is a single drive while the duo adds a second RAID 1 drive for data redundancy. Prices start at just $122 for a 1TB version up to $454 for the 6TB RAID version (via Amazon).

There are many reasons to back up an iOS device. Need to replace that iPhone? Backup and restore! Upgrading to a new iPad? Backup and restore! Sometimes an iOS device just acts weird with no way from the user end to fix them, and a full restore can help a device run in a much smoother manner. As well, the beauty of the restoration process is that a backup can be reinstalled on a completely different device, making upgrading to a new version of the iPhone or iPad easy. It makes upgrading to a new type of device, such as going from iPod touch to iPhone, and even to an iPad possible as well. But how does one go about doing this?

The iTunes backup process is fairly simple. While a backup is created after every device sync, individual full backups can be made by right clicking (or Command-clicking) on the device in the iTunes sidebar, and choosing Back Up. After the lengthy backup process, that backup with its date and time will appear in a list of backups when restoring from iTunes.

iOS 5 introduced iCloud backups and restoring, and these skip iTunes altogether. The advantage to iCloud backup is quite simply that it does not go through iTunes. There’s no weirdness involved with apps and media getting inadvertently deleted from a device unintentionally because iTunes decided to replace them. It’s much more painless when restoring, and handles downloads from multiple iTunes accounts much easier. As well, iCloud backups happen automatically overnight when charging, so if something bad happens, the restored device will not be far out of date.

The downside is that instead of installing from the computer, it downloads apps from the web, which can take up a long amount of time depending on connection speed and depending on how many apps one is restoring. I have too many apps installed (way more than 148) so I usually leave the process to finish overnight. Note that any media synced from a computer will have to be re-added through iTunes. As well, Apple servers tend to get hammered during new product launches, so early adopters may not enjoy a smooth experience. As well, those who take a lot of photographs and videos will find that the Camera Roll takes up a lot of iCloud space. It becomes a choice between either foregoing backing up the Camera Roll (as individual app backups can be disabled in the iCloud menu) or shelling out for more iCloud space.

iCloud backups must be enabled by selecting it as the backup method in iTunes. While the iCloud backup process is otherwise automatic, it can also be manually initiated by going to Settings -> iCloud -> Storage and Backup -> Back Up Now.

In order to reset a device to restore it as new from iCloud, go to Settings -> General -> Reset -> Erase All Content and Settings. This will set it up as if it was a brand new device. Enable iCloud while setting back up, choose to restore from iCloud, and choose the name of the device that was backing up to iCloud that you wish to restore from.

iDolly, the iOS app companion to the service Dolly Drive, has recently been released. The app allows users to access files synced with the Dolly Drive service.

In addition to viewing the files synced with Dolly Drive, the app even lets users make changes to documents and files right on the iPhone or iPad. Those changes will be synced and ready to go when the user gets back to whatever other device they choose to access it on. Other features include browsing photos stored in Dolly Drive, data protection via signing in, built-in viewers for a variety of document formats.

Dolly Drive is an online storage solution and backup service with Mac-friendly solutions in mind. They aim to take the place of securing users' data after MobileMe ceases to exist and takes with it features such as syncing iPhoto libraries across computers, support for older operating systems, and limited iOS device backup. The service works as a supplement to Apple’s own Time Machine app.

Apple's new iCloud service is the promise of MobileMe made real. Imagine a PC-free future, traveling our world with an iPad, iPhone, iPod touch and yes, even a Mac or PC, without ever having to sync them together again. Apple's got that future started with iCloud, and we spent a little time trying it out. We've untethered our iPhone and iPad and we're here to tell you how to do it and how it works.

Before we start, though, here's a quick video, right from Apple, explaining the concept.

iPhone Unleashed
iCloud wants to be the basis of our wireless future. The basics of iCloud are contained in the settings app on the iPhone and iPad, the System Preferences on a Mac, and the iCloud Control Panel on a Windows PC. First up, we needed to update our iTunes to version 10.5, then our iPhone 4 to iOS 5, via that new iTunes. When activating a new iOS device, users will see a couple of new screens to walk them through the iCloud setup. The best way to do this is to log in with an Apple ID, either one that already exists, or creating a new one from the iCloud screens.

For details on how to deal with Apple accounts in a family or work group, check our article iOS 5, iCloud, and iTunes – Set Up in a Multiple Device Family. If a MobileMe user, transition that account to an iCloud one here: Me.com. In addition, users can use the iCloud web interface if away from their own specific devices: iCloud.com.

Hit the jump for even more info about iCloud.