iTunes wants to erase everything on my iPhone

By design, an iPhone will sync iTunes content with ONE computer at a time. Any attempt to sync such content to a second computer will result in ALL itunes content being first erased from your phone and then replaced with the content from the second computer. This is a design feature and cannot be overridden. So, move your entire iTunes library from your old computer to your new computer. iTunes content should be stored in your iTunes library, not just on your phone. Storing such content only on your phone is a BAD idea. If something were to happen to your phone, you risk losing it all. You need to make sure your new computer is authorized BEFORE you copy your old library to your new computer: Store>Authorize this Computer.

You can get the the files off, backup with a number of 3rd party apps. I'm sure some one here can recommend one. Copytransmanager seems like a good one.

I've only use a windows program called Media Monkey to retrieve my music. I just re-installed my apps later and re-did the mail set up.

If the content is only on your phone(bad idea! as the iTunes content sync is ONE WAY: COMPUTER TO PHONE), do the following:

1. Disable auto sync when an ipod/iphone is connected under preferences in iTunes(under the edit menu if using Windows).
2. Connect your phone, DO NOT SYNC.
3. Store>Authorize this Computer.
4. File>Transfer Purchases(all of the purchased content on your phone will be transferred to your new computer's iTunes library).

Before you do anything else, put one contact and one calendar entry in whatever supported applications you use for contact & calendar syncing on your computer. This will ensure you get a merge or replace prompt when you do sync. Select merge.

For music you ripped on your own & photos synced to your phone, you will have to use third party software to extract these from your phone BEFORE you sync or do anything else, as Apple makes no provision to do so. Here's one choice to do so:

http://www.wideanglesoftware.com/touchcopy/index.php?gclid=CImvgOSb2qUCFY5N2god5 y-lng

wjosten wrote:
...So, move your entire iTunes library from your old computer to your new computer. iTunes content should be stored in your iTunes library, not just on your phone. ....

I wonder if that step would work for our current situation
(described in http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2676391&tstart=0 )

My Mini has an iTunes10 library. Can I copy it off to a backup drive and then copy the iTunes9 library from my PB onto the Mini and run the update to iTunes10 ... then attach the iPhone (that had been associated with the PB) to the Mini with the updated version of the PB's Library? Will that cause the music (& videos) that are on the phone, but not showing up, to reappear and be playable on the phone?

Last night i synced my mum's iphone on my laptop to update to the new OS 4.2 - It took about 40 minutes to back up then restored and reset.

After this is said restore from back up .... with a list.

The list didn't contain my mums backup only my previous backups on my account and my mums apple account no longer exists not only in itunes but all together.

I have been through the hard drive on my mac and there is no data anywhere which shows the time and backup of my mums iphone backup.

The iphone is completely wiped and the apple account no longer exists, can someone help me and tell me if there is a way i can get the data back? i have used the iphone back up extractor and it isn't there - it must be somewhere as it took forever to backup.

Thanks