An iPhone backup is a file that has been created which contains all of the information such as your music, videos, contacts, settings among others found on your iPhone at the moment of the backup.
An iPhone backup will help you restore a piece of information if it is lost. Also, it will save you time and effort if you bought a new phone and need to transfer all your information into it. It can equally save your life if you have lost your phone but need important pieces of information from it. There are two methods of backing up your iPhone that iPhone provides and other methods using third-party software. You can back up your iPhone using iCloud with your Apple ID and you can equally backup your iPhone with iTunes backup using your PC or Mac.
In this tutorial, we will focus on iTunes backup using your PC or Mac. This is a good way of backing up your data as it can still be handy if you lose your phone and don’t have an idea of your apple ID while the iCloud method requires your Apple ID. This makes it possible for easy data recovery after any data loss on your iPhone.
iTunes backup includes all the information of your phone including the local data such as photos, contacts, messages, call logs, your personal settings, etc.
If you have lost your iPhone data and you want to restore your data backups to your new iPhone, it is important to know the location of the backup file on your computer so that you can be able to restore this backup to your new phone.
After an iTunes backup, by default the backups are saved in MobileSync under the Backup folder. To access this file, proceed to the following folders;
C:\Users\Username\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup\
If you don’t want to go through this method, an alternative method is by using the search box to find your backups. Proceed with this method by.
1. Open the search box on your Windows 7/8/10
2. Type %appdata% and press the enter key
3. Then open Apple Computer, proceed to MobileSync, and finally to Backup.
Another way using the search box is by,
1. Typing %userprofile% in the search box and pressing enter key.
2. There you will find the folder Apple Computer.
3. Finally proceed to MobileSync and finally to Backup.
The above methods will enable you to find your backup files on any Windows 10/8/7 on which you have performed an iTunes backup before. This helps to answer the question of where is iPhone backup stored on Windows 10/8/7.
NB: If you can’t find the AppData folder, this means it might be hidden. To unhide it, you need to enable “Show hidden files” then you should start the procedure again.
In Mac, iTunes stores all backups in the path
/Users/YOURUSERNAME/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup
To manually find it, proceed as shown below
1. Click on "Go" then click on "Go to Folder…" in the menu bar at the top.
2. Then type this; ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup and click on Go.
With Mac OS Mojave 10.14 or earlier versions of Mac, you can find a specific backup by following the steps below;
1. Open iTunes and in the menu bar choose iTunes
2. Proceed to preferences and click Devices
3. Choose a backup, click on the chosen backup while holding the control key, and choose "Show in Folder"
With Mac that doesn’t have iTunes anymore, that is Mac OS Catalina 10.15 and later, just go to Finder and under the General tab, Click Manage backups.
This will enable you to find your iTunes backup on your Mac answering the question where is iPhone backup stored on Mac.
You may have an old iTunes backup and will like to delete some or you may just want to free up some space and deleting some backups is the only option. Deleting iTunes backup is a delicate process as failure to delete the right iTunes backup can affect you greatly by destroying your precious files. It is thus important to know how to properly go about it without affecting your files. Before proceeding with the deletion of the iTunes backup, you should know that editing a backup file or anything within such as changing the name of the file can greatly affect your backup by damaging the files within. So you should in no case edit a backup file as it can only be stored but cannot be read when stored.
You can either delete the iTunes backup directly or you can delete them through an application folder. To directly delete iTunes Backup,
1. Open iTunes on the PC and click on Edit
2. Click on preferences then proceed to the Devices tab
3. Choose the backup that you want to delete and confirm the deletion
To delete iTunes backup through an application folder, you need to locate the application folder. For this follow the path below.
Users/Username/AppData/Roaming/Apple Computer/MobileSync/Backup
Once you locate the Backup folder this way, you can easily delete the iTunes backup following the same procedure as above. It is very possible to copy the backup file to an external drive before you can delete these backup files.
On Mac, the process depends on the operating system version you have. For Mac OS Catalina or later,
1. Click on the Finder icon
2. Choose iPhone in the sidebar
3. Proceed to Manage Backups
4. From there you can easily pick out the backup you want to delete and confirm the deletion.
For Mac OS Mojave and earlier
1. Open iTunes from the application folder or Dock
2. Choose preferences and go to the Devices tab
3. Choose the backup you want to delete and confirm the deletion.
If in the case of deleting your iPhone backups or otherwise, you accidentally deleted your iPhone backups, this can be a great loss as it contains most of your important information that you might desire to keep longer or use in the nearest future. If this happens to you, you should not be scared because there is still a way of recovering everything using data recovery software.
The best data recovery software for this situation is iBeesoft Data Recovery. It is a professional data recovery software which can enable you to recover data lost through many different scenarios such as an accidental deletion as above. Very compatible with Windows and Mac OS, you can be able to recover your data no matter the operating system you are using. Equally very compatible with different hard drives and different file types; the hard drive you use alongside the type of files deleted will not hinder you from recovering your data. It is 100% safe from any virus and is trusted by many with a Trust Score of 4.7 by 1695 users, showing that the software has accompanied many in their data recovery journey. With two scanning modes, the default quick scan and a deep scan, you are rest assured to recover your data at the end of the day.
To proceed with recovering you backups using iBeesoft Data Recovery,
1. Download the software and install it on your computer (you should download the right software for your operating system since the Windows and Mac version both exist) then launch the software.
2. Select the file type to scan for and recover. Here, it is preferable to choose the archives, other file types, and All file Types options all at once as this increases our chances of recovering the backup files.
3. Select the location. That is the hard drive where these files were present and click on scan. This will start the scanning process with a default quick scan.
4. Once the scanning is complete, the recovered files will be displayed. Go through these files and try to find the iTunes backup. If you find them, click on Recover to recover them. In case you don’t find them, perform a deep scan. This will take a longer time than a quick scan but it will be a more vigorous search. Once this is completed, preview the displayed files again and you should be able to find the iTunes backup. Finally, click on recover to get them back.