Q: sync iphone to new computer without losing data
iPhone 5S, iOS 8.3, iTunes 12.2.0, Windows 8.1
My hard drive acted out a little while back and ended up going to hard drive **** (I barely got a year out of it). Friend of a friend replaced it and got some data back, but not my extensive library of CD-ripped and downloaded music. My poor iPhone is now marooned in a pitiful black sea of sinking yet unsyncable despair, a loose click away from everything it has ever saved, searched or seen being erased and ceasing to exist for all eternity, forever and ever, amen. Let me explain.
I want to sync my phone and put some adorable cat videos and BMX fails on it to show potential partners on blind dates, but I apparently can't do that without erasing everything that isn't Apple-ified. Considering that the only other place this library of music exists is on a deceased hard drive in my friend-of-a-friend's garbage bin, I don't want this to happen. I also have something like 4 gigabytes of app data in a single DAW app, which would be very nice to keep, but isn't completely necessary as I also have the program on my PC and I think I can just app-sharing them over when the phone's plugged in.
Which brings me to where it gets thorny: silly old me already connected my phone to the computer, multiple times. The apps, music, movies etc. menus within the phone menu on iTunes have the sync option deselected by default, which I presume is why I can hit "sync" when I think I'm done and not lose everything. I authorized the computer and made a backup of the phone, and assumed this was enough. I didn't realize it was not enough until I checked the sync icon in Movies, and attempted to apply. I get a message saying, "The iPhone [my phone] is synced with another iTunes library on [old library]. Do you want to erase this iPhone and sync with this library?" Essentially the same message comes up when I check the sync icon in Music, without even clicking Apply.
So, after some googling and agitated searching for the now nonexistent disk mode, I found I could pick everything from my phone and stick it in iTunes via a nifty little program call TouchCopy, though I wasn't sure about the app da- uh oh, TouchCopy will only do 100 songs before you have to cough up 30 bucks for the full license. I am going away to school in a couple weeks, and I need to pinch all the pennies I come across, so I really don't want to take that expense. Can I just go ahead and sync and clear it, then restore the backup? Or will it still lose the data, or not recognize the phone or something?
TL;DR: I have connected my iPhone to (basically) a new computer without syncing, I cannot access the old files because they're off polluting groundwater, I have lots of pirate booty that will get wiped if I sync without moving it onto the computer somehow, I'm cheap and don't want to buy software to do it, and I need old meme videos to impress some soon-to-be-ex-singles. Is there any shortcut or free software to move everything on the phone, in the same way that TouchCopy does?
iPhone 5s, iOS 8.1
Posted on Aug 13, 2015 10:10 PM