RESTORE FROM BACKUP does NOT restore everything. WHY APPLE?

thespaciousmind wrote:

Here's how I use my iPhone:

I connect to the app store. I buy lots of apps.
After a while I'll connect to iTunes. I right-click and choose "Backup".
That's it.

So when I do this, NONE of my apps are getting backed up?
My apps are backed up during a "sync" process? If that's true, when does that occur?
Just before I do the backup? If this is the case, isn't "sync" = "backup"?

BTW, in my iTunes prefs->devices window, I have this box CHECKED:
"Prevent iPods, iPhones and iPads from syncing automatically".

I recall doing this because I don't want iTunes automatically doing anything as soon as I connect my iPhone. I don't trust iTunes. It's screwed me and just about everyone else I know who uses it.

So again, does "sync" = "backup my app data" = "copy app data to computer"?

When you back up your phone, everything should be included in the back up. IT takes a mirror image of your phone when you back up. When you restore your phone and restore from back up, everything should go back into your phone. As long as you have transfered all your purchased content from your iphone to itunes, and made another back-up.

I've done this countless of times, and when I restore from back up, all the apps that was in that back up goes back into my phone, including music, videos, photos, settings, mail accounts, contacts, everything.

When you back up your phone, everything should be included in the back up. IT takes a mirror image of your phone when you back up.

Not true.

This link provides the data that is included with your iPhone's backup.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1766

As already provided in this thread a number of times, no iTunes content on the iPhone is included with the iPhone's backup - no music, movies, tv shows, podcasts, audiobooks, or 3rd party apps. No iTunes content whatsoever is included with the iPhone's backup. All iTunes content on your iPhone should be in your iTunes library on your computer and your iTunes library on your computer should be included with your computer's backup along with all other important data.

Photos transferred from your computer to your iPhone are not included with the iPhone's backup either. All photos transferred from your computer to your iPhone should remain on your computer and be included with your computer's backup.

The link provided includes detailed info about what is included with the iPhone's backup, which is not a mirror image of the iPhone.

It may not be true for you but it is true for me, as I have done this countless of times and when I do restore from back up, everything that was on the back up is back on my phone, including apps, music, video, etc.

Note that I don't have other third party software on my computer to do this.

It IS NOT true for you nor for anyone else.

The iPhone's backup IS NOT a mirror image of the iPhone.

Please read the link I provided regarding the data that is included with the iPhone's backup.

The reason all iTunes content that was on your iPhone before restoring with iTunes is restored on your iPhone is because all iTunes content that was on your iPhone is in your iTunes library. No iTunes content whatsoever is included with the iPhone's backup - no music, movies, tv shows, podcasts, audiobooks, or 3rd party apps. Pictures transferred from your iPhone are not included with the iPhone's backup either.

Read the link provided.

Whatever, Just last week, I ended up replacing my phone. With the new phone, I've done a Restore from back up. And everything that I had back up previously had gone back to my new phone from that back up. I.E Apps, contacts, photos, music, video. settings.

It is not "whatever".

Which part of the info included with the link provided - the data included with the iPhone's backup and everything else that has been provided in this thread regarding what is included with the iPhone's backup by more than just me do you not understand?

Everything got transferred to your new iPhone because all your settings under the various tabs for your previous iPhone sync preferences is included with the iPhone's backup. Your music selections under the Music tab for your iPhone sync preferences, your app selections under the Apps tab for your iPhone sync preferences, and your photo selections under the Photos tab for your iPhone sync preferences are pre-selected when restoring your iPhone with iTunes from the iPhone's backup or when transferring the backup for an existing iPhone to a new iPhone. All music, movies, tv shows, podcasts, audiobooks, and photos on your computer selected to be transferred to your iPhone will be re-transferred to the iPhone, but not from the iPhone's backup. This data is transferred from your computer to your iPhone, not from the iPhone's backup.

The iPhone's backup IS NOT a mirror image of the iPhone. There are no ifs, ands, buts, or "whatever" about it. Do you know what a mirror image means?

Kwopau wrote:
Whatever, Just last week, I ended up replacing my phone. With the new phone, I've done a Restore from back up. And everything that I had back up previously had gone back to my new phone from that back up. I.E Apps, contacts, photos, music, video. settings.

I think you are getting confuse between sync and backup. Allan already explained it. The reason that you got your contacts, photos, musics, videos, and apps all back onto your phone after you restored is because all of these items were already on your computer. Your contacts are in your outlook, your photos, music, videos, and apps are in your directories on your computer. When you restored, it sync all of these items back onto your phone. The backup on the other hand will only backup what it stated on the link Allan provided.

Hi Allan,

I know this will be quite a change of tone from what you've been getting so far here in this thread, but I want to start of by saying thank you, for all the help and guidance you have been and are giving us. I greatly appreciate it.

I have a question on apps folder structure upon restoring from backup. I will share with you the chronology of events, what I understand, what I hope to achieve and what ways I think this can be achieved. By sharing with you my whole thought process, I hope to get your critique and correction if at any part I have misconstrued the logic. Thanks in advance again.

I have 2 iPhone and 2 iPads. When I bought my first iPad (brand new) I plugged it into iTunes and did a restore from my iPhone 4G backup. I believe I selected "Sync Apps" (though I can't confirm now cause I formatted my computer already) because all my iPhone apps were synced to my iPad - which is great. Q1 --> Because I restored from my iPhone 4G backup which presumably had "Sync Apps" checked, I believe my first iPad's iTunes syncing options also had "Sync Apps" checked as well - reason is that all the "Music", "Movies" and "Photos" options were also transferred over. Am I correct? Thanks

So for the rest of the post, I will assume the iTunes setting for my 1st iPad was set to "Sync Apps" (until you correct me otherwise).

My computer was running a bit crappy --> Windows, I know haha, so I formatted it. I did not save my backup file to an external harddrive and then put it back into the %appdata% iTunes Mobile Sync folder. Therefore after formatting, I plugged my iPad into the new computer and did a backup. Because (if I remember correctly, - (Q2) please correct me if I am wrong) it sensed my iPad as connect to a previous iTunes it asked me if I wanted to disconnect from the previous iTunes and sync to this one cause I do know that we can only sync to one iTunes at a time. I had to re-configure all my "Music, "Movies" and "Photo" settings again as this was a new iTunes configuration - which I do understand. Q3 - if I have a new iTunes because I formatted my computer, but I ported over the old backup file and restored my iPad from there, would it still be considered a new iTunes link and thus I have to configure everything again? I don't think so cause the backup contains all the settings; what I think will happen is that I will just be asked if I want to disconnect from the old iTunes and connect to the new one, and all my settings will be restored from the backup.

So I synced my "Music", "Movies", "Photos" and also "Info" and "Podcasts" (I don't use "TV Shows") and got it all set up. Only thing I didn't tick was the apps - perhaps cause I didn't take the time to understand it previously owing to the fact that I didn't need to then ha, but now I do!! So after everything was synced, I did a backup. After reading your thread, and the link you gave, I understood that I have to transfer purchases from my iPad because my iTunes had no apps - as it is a "new iTunes". So I transferred my purchases.

Next I joined my 2nd iPad (second hand iPad) and did a "Restore" (If you are experiencing problems with you iPad, you can restore its original settings by clicking Restore.) to wipe out apps etc that the previous owner had. Q4 - what is the difference betwixt the "Restore" in iTunes below "Check for Update" and the iPad's "Settings" --> "General" --> "Reset" --> "Erase All Content and Settings"? I believe (with some experiments ha) the "Restore" in the iTunes will give me a "brand new" iPad but I don't know what is the difference betwixt that and "Erase All Content and Settings".

I then restored from the backup of my 1st iPad. But remember just now I mentioned that I did not tick the "Sync Apps" in my 1st iPad's settings? So after the restore was done, I had all my "Music", "Movies" and "Photos" + "Podcasts", "Info", everything but my "Apps" --> because I didn't tick "Sync Apps" in my backup. So my 2nd iPad had everything but "Apps".

Now I need to rectify that and create a mirror of my 1st iPad. I don't jailbreak my iOS devices and all my Apps are bona fide purchases with my hard earned money 🙂 . Here is the solution I thought of and the single problem I face.

Solution: On my 2nd iPad, click Sync Apps, select all the apps I want in my iPad, and then click Apply. Then I restore the backup of my 1st iPad. That restores all my app data and very importantly, my folder structure (cause when we have a lot of apps and we organise it all into folders, re-putting them back into folders can be quite time consuming; quite the antithesis of computing in the first place).

This truly give me a mirror image of my 1st iPad (please kindly correct me if I am wrong). The only problem is that, the Sync Apps is still not ticked. Q5 - Is there any benefits of my ticking "Sync Apps" vis a vis doing it this work around method? (Update: I thought of something - "Sync Apps" would allow all the apps on my iPad to be automatically synced to my iTunes but for my work around, I need to think of all the apps I want on my iPad and tick them. If it is for example 50 out of 50 apps, it's simple. But if it's 50 apps out of 150 apps in my iTunes then it would be a big headache. Any other benefits / costs?) My "File Sharing" is still working ok - in the sense I can still transfer data to my apps without having it synced (thankfully it is not sync dependent - but please once again correct me if I am wrong).

The reason why I do this work around method is because if I were to click "Sync Apps", it would get all my apps into my iPad but it would destroy all my folder structures. Q6 - however if I do this "Sync Apps", when the apps are transferred to my iPad I would have all the app data on my iPad already right? Because I postulate it work on a n-tier abstraction separating data from the app. I think this is true because previously I restored from backup and had some apps missing, but when I downloaded the app all the data was "magically" there.

Q7 - is there any way to maintain apps folder structures when I am syncing to a new iTunes instead of the work around I have thought of?

Q8 - and last question haha. My iPad has 10 3rd party apps now for example. If I backup now, it would backup the app data of all 10 apps (3rd party apps - notation left out for simplicity sake moving forward). However if I deleted 2 apps from these 10 apps, then if I backup the 8 apps, would it mean that the backup no longer stores the 2 deleted apps's app data? I think that would be the case but I would just like to confirm.

Thank you for reading my very long post and I really appreciate all your help, Allan and all others. Looking forward to your advice, guidance and response!! Thank you once again!!!

P.S. does iTunes lag quite a bit in Windows (if you are a Windows user)? For me it's not the quickest programme around; can get quite laggy sometimes, on my newly formatted and empty 64 bit 4GB Dual Core 2.4 GHz HP TX2 and Acer computer as well

Message was edited by: computerone248

SO HOW DO APPS GET BACKED UP!? What exactly do I click on?

Your chosen alias certainly does apply to you.

Your question (screaming this time) has been answered - more than once. Read my previous posts in this thread - again (s l o w l y this time) which specifically answers this question.

The iPhone's backup is updated as the first step during the iTunes sync process. If you don't sync your iPhone with iTunes, you need to manually select "transfer purchases from - the name of your iPhone" after downloading an app or apps with your iPhone to transfer the apps to your iTunes library - this is done automatically after doing so when syncing an iPhone with iTunes with Sync Apps selected under the Apps tab for the iPhone sync preferences with iTunes - WHICH HAS ALREADY BEEN PROVIDED SEVERAL TIMES IN THIS THREAD. Your reading comprehension skills need plenty of work, or that spacious mind of yours has limited brain cells.

I think it's completely RIDICULOUS that the "BACKUP" does not backup your APPS.
Apple's "BACKUP" option halfbaked CRAP. This is so effing complicated but it doesn't need to be, and shouldn't be.

Once again - there is no reason for the iPhone's backup to include apps since all 3rd party apps on your iPhone should be in your iTunes library on your computer and will be with Sync Apps selected under the Apps tab for your iPhone sync preferences with iTunes. Since all 3rd party apps on your iPhone should be in your iTunes library on your computer ALONG WITH ALL OTHER ITUNES CONTENT ON YOUR IPHONE, it would be a duplicate effort along with taking DOUBLE THE STORAGE SPACE on your computer's hard drive to have the apps in your iTunes library AND included with your iPhone's backup. That would be ridiculous, which the habitual whiners and ranters of this world would have a kanipchen fit about - apps duplicated on their computer's hard drive taking up double the storage space. Including 3rd party apps with the iPhone's backup is not necessary.

Sell your iPhone to someone else quick, fast, and in a hurry and purchase a device that performs a backup just how you like it and is not so complicated for you. If the iPhone backup process is so very complicated for you - which is done automatically by iTunes as the first step during the iTunes sync process when SYNCING - which the iPhone is designed to do - SYNC WITH ITUNES - SINCE THE IPHONE INCLUDES AN IPOD - AND THIS INCLUDES 3RD PARTY APPS WITH SYNC APPS SELECTED UNDER THE APPS TAB FOR YOUR IPHONE SYNC PREFERENCES WITH ITUNES, you need to get another device. Does Fisher-Price make a cell phone?

Does Fisher-Price make a cell phone?

Yes! It even talks!!!

!https://www.boscovs.com/wcsstore/boscovs/images/store/product/images/0402081139 0691.jpg!

Cheaper than an iPhone too!

WRONG.

Reading comprehension needs plenty of work.

Get the fisher-price phone.

When you sync an iPhone, first of all iTunes makes a backup automaticaly (you don't need to do it manually); when it finishes the backup, it will sync the iPhone content (Apps, music, etc). You have to difference between Apps binaries (they are transfered to iTunes or the iPhone DURING the sync, not the backup), and the Apps settings, that are backed up during the backup phase of the sync.

iPhone backups includes iPhone conguration, Apps settings (and saved games if you have), SMS, pictures, notes, Address book, etc. It doesn't backup any Apps, just backups its settings.

When you restore an iPhone backup, it will restore iPhone conguration, Apps settings (and saved games if you have), SMS, pictures, notes, etc. After restoring the backup, the iPhone will start automatically a sync to install again all Apps, music, etc.

If an App is not RIGHT developed and it doesn't store its settings in the standard way, the settings of that App won't be restored.

Hi Allen,
You are obviously a VERY intelligent man! You know your Apple gear very well. Unfortunately, many of us coming to this forum are quite UNfamiliar with Apple's methods and find them confusing when we "plunge in". You will go a lot further with your attempted help if you would (as an old grad school professor once instructed me), "just answer the question!"

Specifically, Apple's restoration methods are quite convoluted as compared with (for example) those used by Windows programs. Typically, "Restore" in Windows software most often means, "restore EVERYTHING" except for exceptions noted. Whereas, in my iPad, "Restore" means, "Restore the OS and all of the apps and music and such that I have given a check mark to". I can assure you that this small fact is NOT obvious to a new user. And suggesting that a user is some sort of a dummy for not knowing it right out of the box is counterproductive.

I found that double clicking on the "joes ipad" label on the left side of the iTunes screen and then selecting EACH tab along the top in turn and then clicking RESTORE gets things restored. It did take me a few hours to ferret out this detail, and unfortunately, it was not anywhere I could find it in the manual OR on this discussion group. But then, I scanned for "restore apps" and found thousands of posts with this subject.

So.. Allen, please take this suggestion as a gentlemanly one as it is intended.