Restore SMS history back on to iPhone 4s [Windows 7 Users]

Hi

No disrespect for Mac users, it's just that I need specific Windows 7 help... 😉

I have a need to do a full restore on my iPhone 4s [can you guess why?]

I am ok with all the things that will happen when I do, what I'll lose and what I'll have to manually restore but the one thing preventing me is that I really don't want to lose my SMS/Text mesage history. I realise this is sentimental and not a life altering thing to lose but I'm really keen to do anything I can to keep this little history of my life.

I know I can use some clever software to pull the texts from my phone onto my PC to read and archive as .pdf, .csv etc but none of those seem to allow one to restore the SMS back onto a clean and restored phone. You can only seem to do that by using a previous back-up and that is the very thing I have to avoid.

So I did some digging about here and in the wider web world and I now know where my SMS history is kept and I've proved that it's there and that it does just contain my SMS history.

Its here, in the file named 3d0d7e5fb2ce288813306e4d4636395e047a3d28, which resides in "%Appdata/Roaming/Apple Computer/MobileSync/Backup/[long string name]"

So here's my idea:

1. Back-up iPhone via iTunes
2. Save a copy of my entire back-up to a safe place on my HD
3. Do the full, clean restore of the phone
4. Set it all up as I need: Music, apps, emails; you know the drill
5. Back-up to iTunes now, and only now.
6. Take that file [3d0d7e5fb2ce288813306e4d4636395e047a3d28] from my old back up [but only that] and replace the one in the lastest backup with this. [using copy/paste]
7. Do another restore but this time let the phone update from the backup that I made when it was clean but with the added file in step 6.

My theory is that I'll benefit from the cleanliness of a fresh restore but will fool iTunes into thinking the sms history is valid for this handset.

So...

• Will this work?
• Has anyone tried this?
• Is there a less complicated way to do what I'm trying to achieve?

I'm happy to give this a go but a little reassurance would be most welcome.

Thanks in advance for any help or advice...