Tip: Archive iPhone backup in Windows

Very clever, thank you. I have bookmarked this post. I did not know how to archive backups in iTunes for Windows other than using an external drive. I checked my MBP (10.11.5) and sure enough there is a drop down menu in iTunes >>> Devices that allows archiving. No such option on my W10 iTunes (12.4.1). Is Apple "dumbing down" iTunes for Windows?

Can you confirm how you renamed the cloned folder set? Under Backup I have two folders, one for my iPhone and one for my iPad. Should I copy them leaving the existing names as-is except appending the timestamp at the end of the long alphanumeric string? Like 6d473d7c6.......-20160709 ?? Is that what you mean?

You likely know this already but in Windows 10 one can go directly to the Roaming folder (normally hidden) by typing %appdata% in Cortana. In Windows 7 I had to change the "View" to show hidden/system files.

elcpu wrote:

checked my MBP (10.11.5) and sure enough there is a drop down menu in iTunes >>> Devices that allows archiving. No such option on my W10 iTunes (12.4.1). Is Apple "dumbing down" iTunes for Windows?

No, Apple is "smarting up" iTunes for Mac. Windows iTunes has never had this feature. Mac iTunes has had it for several years 😉 I don't know why the feature isn't available for Windows. It seems pretty basic.

Thanks.... 🙂

The easiest way is to open settings in iphone open about and change the iphone name this will create a new backup using new name whilst keeping old backup with old name.

I've used the "archive backup" feature on the Mac after every single backup I make for the reason that the backup you have just created is not "archived" immediately nor automatically until after a predetermined timeframe (of which I cannot be certain) has passed. I've been bitten by this delayed "archive" when testing certain backups before I figured out the "archive backup" feature. If you backup the device again within this (unknown) time frame, the backup you just created (and has not yet been archived according to iTunes) will be overwritten. Seems as if the backup is auto-archived the "next day" or after 12:00am but I've never been able to pinpoint when it actually occurs.

Opps, I thought it sounded good, anyway.

turingtest2 wrote:

However on a Mac you may also be able to take advantage of Time Machine which normally backs up every hour.

Much easier to just archive the backup immediately after it's made. The trouble I had in the past was that I didn't know one could even do this. I believe it was Lawrence Finch that I heard about archiving backups from initially...a great contributor for sure.

You've offered a great tip/work-around for Windows users...I'm surprised that iTunes for Windows doesn't have this ability. Maybe Apple will eventually bring iTunes for Windows up to speed but in the meantime, your tip is a great one. Thanks for that, tt2.

SergZak wrote:

turingtest2 wrote:

However on a Mac you may also be able to take advantage of Time Machine which normally backs up every hour.

Much easier to just archive the backup immediately after it's made. The trouble I had in the past was that I didn't know one could even do this. I believe it was Lawrence Finch that I heard about archiving backups from initially...a great contributor for sure.

You've offered a great tip/work-around for Windows users as well...I'm surprised that iTunes for Windows doesn't have this ability...maybe Apple will eventually bring iTunes for Windows up to speed but in the meantime, your tip is a great one. Thanks for that, tt2.

What's sad is that there are quite a few Windows backup add-ons that provide similar capabilities to Time Machine, but Windows users don't generally think of using them. I had a great one from IBM (of all places) that was actually better than Time Machine; It monitored file updates and would immediately back up any file that had been changed. It would keep a user-specified number of generations of the file (the default was 30). So it didn't consolidate into weeks and months; it just kept every version (using a differential storage method). I think this was a Windows implementation of the old mainframe generation data sets. But there are still many backup options for Windows; some are quite sophisticated.

A question for you Lawrence,

Have you ever pinpointed when exactly the backups are auto-archived by iTunes? tt2 alluded to "As far as I am aware, iTunes only creates listed archived backups if you restore a backup". Have you found any definitive situation other than that? I had assumed it was after a certain point in time as my post above stated.

Any insight/info would be appreciated.

iOS backups are auto-archived only when you create a backup after an update. The new backup is a full rather than incremental and the backup of the previous version remains where it was, which is the mobilesync folder.

If you go to iTunes preferences/devices you can see the old and new backups, with an associated date (except for the latest, which has no date).

If you manually archive a backup in the same preferences pane (Mac only) again, all it does is create a new backup rather than incremental the next time you back up.

Thanks Lawrence.😎