How to restore a previous backup?

I backup my iPhone 4sregularly. I recently needed to reset it back to factory settings. However, the only restore options I had in iTunes were two backups from just minutes before I did the reset. How do I find other restore selections?

Posted on Feb 22, 2014 5:02 PM

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Feb 22, 2014 5:08 PM in response to edwardvb

They don't exist. Backups are incremental; that is, a new backup is created by just saving changes from the previous backup. If you have an iCloud backup it saves the 3 most recent. But on your computer it saves only the most recent and the most recent of the previous iOS version.


For the future, if you have a Mac, you can force a new backup by going to iTunes Preferences, Devices tab. Right click on a back and choose "Archive" from the floating menu. The next backup will be from scratch. You can also restore a previous backup from Time Machine.


You can sort of do this with Windows if you regularly back up your user data.

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How to restore a previous backup?

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