How to tell iTune to keep every backup?

I'm gonna rain on your parade...click on your existing backup folder...select get info...I think you're gonna be surprised how big this is...you'll fill your hard drive pretty quick if you do what you plan. Look, if you want to save this stuff, I'll tell you how to point to an external drive. Post back if you want instructions.

Kinda thought you would :-) I see what you're saying and you're right, but I don't have an external drive option in this setup. So what I'll do is just perform the name changes to the critical data files I need, most notably the SMS data file. That's small and it's what I'm most concerned about keeping. Can I get your blessing on that? If I rename that file only, what will iTunes do for the backup? I assume it will leave everything else in place and just backup the SMS data, having been fooled into thinking there isn't any in the current folder. Will this work?

Now you see why iTunes only keeps incremental backups...wouldn't take long to fill a hard drive...heck, my iPhone backup folder is 6GB's.

Unless you really know what you're doing, you DO NOT want to mess with that backup folder...trust me on this...you can really screw things up & make the data un-recoverable. External drives are dirt cheap:

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/1394/USB/EliteAL/eSATA_FW800_FW400_USB

Get one(at least twice as large as your internal drive), use Time Machine in manual mode...only turn it on when you want a backup performed. This will do exactly what you want with zero chance of messing anything up.

I understand your reasons for why the iTunes backup process is good the way it is, but for us who use both Apple and PC, it is a little frustrating not having more options available to perform certain tasks. Apple loves to tell people how things should be. I'm just saying it would be much better to have an option whether to overwrite the backup data or not, and even to be able to back/restore individual portions of the data. In this regard, Blackberry does a much better job. Each backup is saved as a separate archive and can be fully or partially restored from any point in the past without having to use a separate backup program like Time Machine. And the Blackberry mounts as a hard drive, so the large data (which is what makes up the large iPhone backup folder) such as photos and videos can be copies over with ease.

Just saying...

See, I don't expect much sympathy on this forum, and I do love Macs, but it's the "my way or the highway" approach that is jarring. It would be nice if I used Time Machine, and if I had an external drive, but in my work environment we are not allowed to attach external devices. So I am limited not by the cost but by the circumstances. No one else may agree, but this backup system is less than ideal. It makes no sense to me to not be able to normally archive phone data in a way where it is intuitive to restore, other than using Time Machine. I guess I'm in the extreme minority here. But I do appreciate your help.

I'm just a messenger here, I'd didn't code or design iOS or how iTunes handles iPhone backups. I fully understand what you'd like to do, but you have to work within the design constraints of they way things are. For 99.9% of iPhone users, keeping every iPhone backup is not only pointless, but a waste of drive space, so don't look for Apple to invest any resources to make it an option to do what you want.

I just plugged in my iPad 1 & my iPhone 4. After waiting for them to synchronize, I right clicked, selected Restore, and discovered a whole bunch of October backup of my iPhone, and my current versions of both.

I renamed both rently to make it obvious when I read my iTunes sidebar which device was which (From "Howard Brazee's iPad", to "iPad (Howard Brazee's)".

So I suppose I should delete those old backups somehow.

And depend upon Time Machine when I want an older backup.

Correct, iTunes does keep multiple versions of backups. I have discovered that it happens usually after you do a restore on the phone or change the name of the phone.

I know on January 7th, I did buy a new Verizon 4S and was messing with it alot in iTunes because I had no 3G data while at home. I was restoring and trying all sorts if things to try and figure out why I had no 3G at home.

I haven't discovered how to purge unwanted backups yet.

Unfortunately, Apple don't think about the business world, where we keep multiple backups of important data.

Last week, I had to reset the MD's iPhone, which meant backing it up then resesting and restoring the data. Only, this time, only half of the apps were restored, no camera roll and no app data. There were no earlier backups available thanks to Apple's policy. I am lucky to have a job after the MD's displeasure.

I don't know what causes iTunes to keep multiple backups, but there are instances where I have dozens of backups per day going back to 2007 for each and every iPhone I have owned. Check out this screen cap for just one day...oh the phone number sort of captured there hasn't worked since 2010.

I disagree, Wooten. iTunes keeping multiple backups of your iPhone from different dates is no more a memory hog than Time Machine keeping multiple backups -- when both are keep only the changes from the last backup. The use is that if one deletes or supercedes over data one realizes they want to returned (an old text; an old email; an old contact or phone cam photo they deleted) and they can winnow down a date window, the user than has a decent chance of getting their system back. I can tell you that with a jailbroken older iPhone, there are times when one wants to do a restor from a backup that was made immediately after jailbreaking, or maybe even later before one installed some quirky app that began causing problems days afterward. In other words, there are any host of reasons for wanting multiple backups of iPhone data, just that same as wanting multiple backups of one's hard drive data on one's computer.

And by the way -- iTunes absolutely DID used to record and store previous backups. Said backups used to automatically put the date of the backup in the title/filename of the backup. And, contrary to what you have been asserting, ALL of those backups were functional. It was NOT just the last or most recent backup that was functional.

Jess Pie wrote:

And by the way -- iTunes absolutely DID used to record and store previous backups. Said backups used to automatically put the date of the backup in the title/filename of the backup. And, contrary to what you have been asserting, ALL of those backups were functional. It was NOT just the last or most recent backup that was functional.

By the way, you must have had a very different iPhone than any of the ones that I have owned since June 29, 2007. None of mine ever kept multiple backups that could be restored. There WERE backups with older dates, but I could never restore from them after updating my phone. The only one that ever showed up when I chose Restore was the most recent. In addition, the older ones were only created when the phone was updated, as the last backup of the previous version. So you must have had a special version of iTunes and iPhone firmware.

Mine used to keep multiple backups too. It used to be that if you command-clicked on the iDevice in the sidebar, and selected "Back up" that it would store a version of the backup. Now, it just backs up/overwrites the latest version.

Even the latest iTunes still allows you to select an old backup, but I'm not sure I see the point anymore since you can no longer save versions of backups.

My first iPhone is a 4s, I restored it from my iPod touch backup using this method.

Thank you guys for posting this.

I too am wondering why Apple ditched the multiple-backup/multiple-session/whatever-you-wanna-call-it-bite-me in iTunes. I think its yet another bungle from the iOS/iTunes team. First they couldn't get LiveUpdate and playlist orders right ... think they fixed that now, but I got so frustrated checkin in on it, I gave it up for good.

Now they take away our backups. What apes get paid to work at Apple these days? The multiple backups allowed us to RESTORE our iPhones to a state where we KNOW there's no problems -- usually a manual save that we did. Now we can't do that. So for example, you're like me and 2013 screwed up DO NOT DISTURB... sorry -- can't restore to a date BEFORE that anymore. You have to wait till the 7th.

Totally unacceptable from Apple. They need to fire more people. A billion people on this planet and a couple thousand unemployed developers that can do better than the current muck-ups.

So now the back up is only useful for... the extreme case where your iPhone goes COMPLETELY kaput.

Methinks the reason they removed multiple session backups was to simplify things. Notice that syncing now is a SMIDGE faster. That's probably due to not having to sync a "session" (for those saying there is only ONE backup to begin with).

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