Backing up your computer and other devices is one of the most important maintenance tasks you can do. It can save you from certain disaster if your phone dies or if you accidentally drop and break it. If you don’t have any data backed up on it, if the device crashes or malfunctions, you’ll lose it all.
And of course, your smartphone is probably one of the most important things you own, considering you take it with you everywhere and store all your photos, videos, music, movies, TV shoes, and e-books inside. You may have already backed up some of them thanks to syncing, but if not, you’re putting yourself at risk. Here’s how to back up your iPhone or iPad to avoid losing data if the device fails at any point.
Back up your iPhone or iPad
The process of backing up both iPhone and iPad is the same and very easy to do:
- Open iTunes and plug your iOS device into your computer
- In the upper-right corner of the iTunes window, you will see a button that says or, depending on what you have.
- Click this button to open another window that provides information about your device.
- Below the main information is the Backup section. Select on the left to make a full backup of your iOS device.
- Optionally, you can choose to protect the backed up personal data from others accessing it.
- Then click to start the backup process. You may get a popup talking about apps on your iOS device that are not currently in your iTunes Library. Click to sync these apps with your iTunes Library.
- iTunes will start importing any apps into your iTunes Library, if any, and then back up your iOS device. When you’re done, simply click the blue button in the upper right corner and you’re ready!
How to Restore from a Backup
If you run into a situation where you need to restore from a backup you created, iTunes can easily do that too. However, you need to disable Find My iPhone first. This can be found by opening the Settings app and tapping on it. Then turn off Find My iPhone from the list.
- Click on the info screen of your iOS device.
- Then choose backup from the drop-down list. If you only have one device, there will be only one selection.
- Click to start the restore process.