Hi this is Gary with MacMost Now.
On today's episode let's take a look at doing a backup and restore of an iOS device.
So if you have a problem with your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch you might get the advice
to backup and restore it.
You may get this advice online but you also might get it at the Genius Bar in the Apple
Store.
This is kind of a complete reset of your iPhone.
It resets it to factory settings and then it reinstalls all of your stuff.
So you should end up with the same stuff, same settings, as you did before but it kind
of refreshes the entire iPhone.
Now this may seem like a pretty heavy handed fix, especially if you are only having minor
problems, but it is really pretty simple.
It just stores all of your stuff on your Mac, which you should be doing anyway in a backup,
and then basically resets everything and puts everything back.
It's pretty simple to do.
It could take some time but there is not really much you have to do except set things in motion.
So here I am in iTunes 11.
I've connected my iPhone with the dock cable.
It is important to use the cable for this, not just rely on a WiFi connection.
Not all the functions will be there unless you have a cable attached.
I turn on the left sidebar.
If you don't have the sidebar on iTunes 11 you can also select your iPhone at the top
of the screen.
Then you will get to this area here where you will be reviewing your iPhone and you've
got things across the top like Summary, Info, Apps, Tones, etc.
So you want to click on Summary.
Under summary you will see information about your phone listed and also the next section
is called Backups.
So now you know you are in the right place to do this.
Now simply connecting your iPhone and running iTunes may have already started a sync backup.
But I always like to make sure.
So I press the sync button that usually is at the bottom right corner, now it says Apply,
and then after syncing I do another backup by hitting the Backup Now button.
Just to make sure I have a good current backup.
It will tell you the time of the backup right underneath there.
Also I want to make sure that you backup to your computer.
It will be a lot faster if use computer backup even if you are using iCloud backup normally.
So switch to This Computer and do your backup.
Switch back to iCloud backup after you are done this process.
Now after it has completed its backup and you have synced you are ready to restore your
iPhone.
So above you will see under iPhone it will have the version number you are running and
Check for Update.
Right next to it is restore iPhone.
So you want to click that button to start the process.
You will go through a series of dialogue boxes including this one.
You may get more depending upon if you are also upgrading your iOS at this moment.
So once you go through those it starts the process of clearing off your iPhone.
That process may take a while so you might want to get a cup of coffee there.
It will go through several different stages.
Once it is done you should end up back here, which is kind of a scary screen because you
want your iPhone to be your old iPhone not your new iPhone.
But if you look there you can see you can set it up as a new iPhone but also the default
is to Restore from this backup.
You have this popup menu of backups and it should automatically have selected your latest
backup.
You can confirm it by looking at the time there.
Then it starts the restore process.
Now the actual restoring from backup is pretty quick.
But that is because it doesn't include the Apps.
So the Apps aren't your data.
The Apps are the Apps.
So you already have those iTunes because you have been syncing.
So what is going to happen now is that it is actually going to reinstall all those Apps.
So that could take a while.
For instance I have a lot of Apps on here.
It takes up most of the space on my iPhone.
So it is going to take a little while to put them all back on.
When you are finally done you get a screen like this and it will take a little while
more for it to basically restart and set it up so that you see your iPhone in iTunes as
before.
Now what you should end up with more or less is your iPhone back the way it was.
The settings will be restored.
That includes data saved by Apps.
So if you saved whether it is media files like Pictures and Instagram or it is just
little bits of text and things in different types of Apps they should all be restored
to what they were before.
So your games saved and positions should be back.
Now it may not be perfect.
For instance if you had a security passcode set for your iPhone you are going to have
to reestablish that and it will prompt you for that.
But more or less you should end up basically back with your iPhone.
If somebody else did this for you you may not even notice that it was done.
So there is basic steps for how to do a backup and restore of your iPhone, iPad, or any iOS
device.
I hope you found this useful.
Until next time this is Gary with MacMost Now.