Backing up and restoring iphone / itunes on new PC

[unclejamaal]

Hi all,

I'll be re-installing Windows 7 on my PC in the next few days. So before I do that I want to back up Itunes and all my Iphone Apps. When I re-install Itunes and restore from my backup I want the iphone to be recognised as an existing device and NOT a new one. This is because my Iphone is jailbroken and I dont want Apple taking over and installing firmware 3.1.3 without asking me

Now, I'm sure its possible to do all the above. I've done a few google searches which tell me how to back up itunes to external USB and then restore later, but its not very clear to me if my iphone will be recognised as a new device and whether itunes will automatically delete everything on the iphone, therefore installing new firmware 3.1.3.

Please, can someone lay my mind to rest and tell me I can safely backup and restore a jailbroken iphone on firmware 3.1.2

 

[unclejamaal]

so no one else has run in to the same scenario before ??

 

[CocoaPuffs]

I am confused what you are trying to accomplish.

Why not just upgrade your OS, then plug in your iPhone and back up everything?

 

[jman240]

I just did the exact same thing, kind of, and here is what happened.

I backed up my entire "My Music" folder to another hard drive. It wouldn't fit on a thumb drive. "C:\Users\Username\My Music" just copy the whole directory.

Install new windows 7 version. I did a complete install, not upgrade. Went from using the RC1 to a full Retail copy (from Ultimate to Professional) and reinstalled the 64 bit iTunes (even though it plops it into the Program Files x86 by default). Once iTunes was reinstalled I simply moved my entire My Music folder back into my user directory and started up iTunes. I had to reauthorize my computer through the store before everything would work.

Once that was done I think my iPhone sync profile came with it, not positive on that. Either way, I didn't have to resync anything, it all worked fine.

As far as restoring your phone to 3.1.2, you need to go browse the iPhone Hacks forums on here because I know there are a few gotchas with that, esp if its a 3gs.

 

[unclejamaal]

Did basically the same thing. Except I have my music folder in D:\Ipod Music\

I used the Itunes consolidate option before I blatted the PC - this copied all my Apps over to my Music folder.

So i blatted my C drive and went from Windows 7 RC to Windows 7 Ultra, reinstalled Itunes, pointed it my music folder and everything synced up, but I had to authorise this PC as a 'new' PC and also the Iphone treated it as a 'new' PC so it ended up resyncing everything from scratch.

Although I didnt lose any music or Apps its not an ideal scenario as I would have liked to keep my playlists and also my song ratings as i base some of my playlists on that