Iphone restoration from Itunes backup

[Miramonti]

I'm researching a solution for a friend.

She's got an iphone (3?) which currently resides at the bottom of a lake, and needs to recover her contacts and everything else that was backed up with itunes.

Is there a software utility to do this, preferably free?

 

[ViRGE]

It's unfortunate she didn't sync contacts with anything. iTunes syncs with just about everything.

Anyhow, as far as I know everything is stored in SQL format. You can decode the backup files, but I'm not sure the resulting SQL files will be of any value.

http://supercrazyawesome.com/

 

[MotionMan]

I'm researching a solution for a friend.

She's got an iphone (3?) which currently resides at the bottom of a lake, and needs to recover her contacts and everything else that was backed up with itunes.

Is there a software utility to do this, preferably free?

Are contacts backed up even if they are not synced to Address Book?

MotionMan

 

[ViRGE]

Are contacts backed up even if they are not synced to Address Book?

MotionMan

Yes.

 

[Miramonti]

It's unfortunate she didn't sync contacts with anything. iTunes syncs with just about everything.

Anyhow, as far as I know everything is stored in SQL format. You can decode the backup files, but I'm not sure the resulting SQL files will be of any value.

http://supercrazyawesome.com/

Thanks for the link. Would of course love a freeware version to refer her to but then again, it's not my money.

 

[stlcardinals]

Is she not getting another iPhone? If she is, it should ask her if she wants to restore the backup of her old phone from iTunes the first time she sets up her new one. Everything should be restored on the new phone then.

 

[alent1234]

Restore from backup to another iPhone or google. On windows computers all the backups are sqllite databases in some directory on the hard drive. Forgot the path. And there are programs to access it and get the data out of it

I have GMAIL set up for push and just dump the contacts into google and not worry about it

 

[MotionMan]

A little off topic, but why do people not back up their phones (or their computers) nowadays? It is practically built in to things like iTunes (and OSX/Time Machine).

MotionMan

 

[Miramonti]

Is she not getting another iPhone? If she is, it should ask her if she wants to restore the backup of her old phone from iTunes the first time she sets up her new one. Everything should be restored on the new phone then.

She'll get a new one but doesn't make sense to get it yet when a new one should be out in a few months.

A little off topic, but why do people not back up their phones (or their computers) nowadays? It is practically built in to things like iTunes (and OSX/Time Machine).

MotionMan

Yes, it is built into Itunes, but not to user-friendly files. This is what she needs to readable access to.

 

[MotionMan]

Yes, it is built into Itunes, but not to user-friendly files. This is what she needs to readable access to.

Contacts to Address Book and photos to iPhoto. Those are very readable.

MotionMan