How to tell iTune to keep every backup?

iTunes only keeps a single backup of your iPhone - true - your very last backup. You can use copytrans shelbee to make multiple iphone backups at different points int time without overwriting the old ones.

aThanasi wrote:

iTunes only keeps a single backup of your iPhone

Sort of.

When you Restore, it archives the current backup and starts a new backup.

Ok having Read This thread - lets summarise :

Itunes is as usual bad and tries to stunt the user in terms of file access or controlling anything

when I choose to "SYNC" or "APPLY" that does not necessarily mean I wish to "BACKUP" - such two events I would prefer to control separately

When people manually choose to "BACKUP" that does not mean they wish to incrementally throw information away and remove any older backups ?

As it maybe from the users perspective they are trying to create a restore point to come back to later ?

And apple assume your running the over animated obscure file format drive filling and wasting > 'time machine' guff in ordered to be covered in their eco system. I like to see my files when backed up, not having to view them through an idiot party interface, which may disappear or stop working at some point in the future, and wastes processor cycles showing me an a wastefully animated starfield as I'm not the kind of idiot who responds to such guff, remote controlling a machines full screen animated time machine interface on a 27" screen - worst internet bandwidth waste known to man - yuck.

iphone backups are singular per device and incremental and you are only covered if your running apples heinous time machine

you can never roll back to an earlier software or reinstall the software your ios device came with unless your an arcane nut who stored some SH blobs and want to hoick about - searching endless - often locked apple forum posts or the internet in general.

anything apple does will always be stored in some user incomprehensible format with backup file names like

6c166843dc0d457dc6c166843dc0d457dc

you can always trust apple not to do anything in a sensible way

why because apple don't really like users or files or sanity

I can see a future in which apple deliberately tries to obfuscate the idea of "the file" from the users view - I dont trust apple with that.

<Edited By Host>

Guys, I don't mean to sound critical but none of this makes any sense to me.
Please explain the following:

1. When I look in c:\%name%\AppData\Roaming\Apple
   Computer\MobileSync\Backup there are many entries. These therefore must be
   either be multiple whole backups, or a backup with incremental updates
2. The latest backup that occurred, after I made some
   longwinded iTunes playlist updates, was
   only 300 meg. This made me nervous – clearly not a full backup
3. Of course as has been pointed out it would be silly of
   iTunes to make a full backup every time you connected your phone to the
   computer – ESPECIALLY since the backups are all saved on C:\ drive!
4. However when you go into iTunes/ Edit/Preferences/Devices, it DOES show multiple backups and lets you delete any of them.
5. However without knowing which are the “base” ones, it
   surely is impossible to know which ones you can safely delete!! If I delete the
   base one by accident, all the increments will be useless!!

Thoughts appreciated. In the meantime I will make a manual backup and create
another huge file on my C:\ drive.

Tonbar wrote:

1. However when you go into iTunes/ Edit/Preferences/Devices, it DOES show multiple backups and lets you delete any of them.
2. However without knowing which are the “base” ones, it surely is impossible to know which ones you can safely delete!! If I delete the
   base one by accident, all the increments will be useless!!

Every entry shown in Edit > Preferences > Devices is a completely separate & complete backup.

The incremental backups are part of the “base backup”. They are not separate.

The backup with no date is the most recent backup (the “base and all increments”).

Tonbar wrote:

Guys, I don't mean to sound critical but none of this makes any sense to me.
Please explain the following:

1. When I look in c:\%name%\AppData\Roaming\Apple
   Computer\MobileSync\Backup there are many entries. These therefore must be
   either be multiple whole backups, or a backup with incremental updates
2. The latest backup that occurred, after I made some
   longwinded iTunes playlist updates, was
   only 300 meg. This made me nervous – clearly not a full backup

The backup does not include music, videos or apps. It DOES include the music library index, app data, home screen layouts, etc. It doesn't need to include music, video and apps because they already exist in the iTunes library and will be retrieved from there if you restore a backup.

hi, tried typing :

defaults write com.apple.iTunes DeviceBackupsDisabled -bool false

defaults write com.apple.iTunes AutomaticDeviceBackupsDisabled -bool false...

i have windows 8 and these commands are not being accepted in cmd.. What are the commands so i can have the most recent backups listed in device backup box in itunes

92whiskey wrote:

hi, tried typing :

defaults write com.apple.iTunes DeviceBackupsDisabled -bool false

defaults write com.apple.iTunes AutomaticDeviceBackupsDisabled -bool false...

i have windows 8 and these commands are not being accepted in cmd..

These are Terminal commands in Mac OS.

What are the commands so i can have the most recent backups listed in device backup box in itunes

All your backups are shown in iTunes prefs > Devices.