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How to Backup Your Data in iTunes Sync Back Up, and Transfer Purchases

To most of us, the iTunes backup functionality is a mystery that we hope will pleasantly surprise us one day. We think weve saved our data by syncing our music playlists occasionally, but dont really give much thought to whether our data is protected. In this article, well remove some of the mystique, and give everyone some much-needed peace-of-mind.
When you plug your iPhone/iTouch/iPad into your computer and run iTunes, there are three forms of communication that you can request happen between your computer and the device: syncing, backing up, and transferring purchases.
Syncing

Syncing happens much more frequently; when your device is syncing, iTunes is making sure that the data on your computer and your phone are up-to-date with each other. Typically, this involves copying music or apps you have purchased on your computer to your device, making sure your calendars and address books match, and stuff like that. When iTunes syncs your device, it does not make a backup — this is the surprise that bites most of us later.
Backing Up

Less frequently, iTunes will make a backup of your device. You can tell this is happening because the iTunes status window (at the top of the iTunes window) will say “Backing up Name of Your Device”. This process actually makes a copy of all of your devices data from all of the apps (including the SMS app, Address Book app, Visual Voicemail if you have it, and all of your other apps). If you ever need to restore your device, the data from this process is what is used, not syncing.
You can see when your last backup was by opening iTunes, opening Preferences (iTunes –> Preferences), and clicking on the devices tab. If youre unhappy with how old the backup is, you can force iTunes to make a new backup in the main iTunes window by right-clicking on the device under “Devices” and clicking “Back Up”.
Transferring Purchases

In the syncing description, I said that syncing copies music and apps that youve purchased on your computer to your device — note that I didnt say a word about the other direction! If you purchase music and/or apps on your device, occasionally youll want to make sure these purchases are copied to iTunes on your computer in case something happens to your device. To copy your purchases, right-click on the device under “Devices” in the main iTunes window and click “Transfer Purchases”. I just did this myself and had five songs and twelve apps that I needed to copy to iTunes.
Backing Up Your Texts/Voicemails

As I mentioned above, the iTunes backup (not sync) does back up your SMS messages and your voicemails (if you have visual voicemail enabled). However, theres not any good way to view those messages with iTunes except to restore your phone from the backup. Thats where Decipher TextMessage and Decipher VoiceMail come in — those tools, and similar software, reads the iTunes backup files and makes its own history of your messages, including images, videos, and other files sent via MMS, so that you can view, save, copy, and print messages as you need them. I enjoy keeping my messages (especially my SMS messages) backed-up this way, because I can actually browse through the history — read old messages between my husband and I when were dating, look at photos my friends sent me, and copy-out information that I realized I never did put to use.
I hope this little post on data protection has been helpful to you. If you have questions, we encourage you to contact us.
Kelly Wilkerson is a Co-Founder of Decipher Media, a software company creating mobile and desktop software. If you have any questions about the contents of the article, please visit http://www.deciphertools.com or email Kelly at info@decipher-media.com
You can also view a video detailing the information in this article at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MjIhFPiFVs
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