Backing Up New iPhone 4S

[dsmail]

Brand new to the land of iPhones iTunes and Mac generally. Have new 4S and connected to iTunes only once and 4S was recognised fine.
Now, a few days later, I have my 4S configured as I want it and need to back it up. I only use iTunes for downloading music and move all downloads out of iTunes straight away so my iTunes library is empty.

I'm concerned that when I reconnect my 4S, the syncing procedure will in effect erase my iPhone as iTunes is empty.

I'm aware that there is a big difference between syncing and backing up on iTunes but want to make certain that I backup properly.

There appears to be many articles on www about all this (almost too many) so thought I'd ask here as I'm sure I'll get good info.

I expect this has been covered (perhaps many times before) so if that is the case, I apologise and ask somebody to point me to the thread.

Thanks

Dave

 

[dominion155]

Brand new to the land of iPhones iTunes and Mac generally. Have new 4S and connected to iTunes only once and 4S was recognised fine.
Now, a few days later, I have my 4S configured as I want it and need to back it up. I only use iTunes for downloading music and move all downloads out of iTunes straight away so my iTunes library is empty.

I'm concerned that when I reconnect my 4S, the syncing procedure will in effect erase my iPhone as iTunes is empty.

I'm aware that there is a big difference between syncing and backing up on iTunes but want to make certain that I backup properly.

There appears to be many articles on www about all this (almost too many) so thought I'd ask here as I'm sure I'll get good info.

I expect this has been covered (perhaps many times before) so if that is the case, I apologise and ask somebody to point me to the thread.

Thanks

Dave

When you sync your device, it should automatically back it up (if you select that feature when you plug it in) It shouldnt erase anything on the device, as long as you have rights to use it (such as if you use someone elses app, when not authorized)

Or you could just go and use ICloud to back it up, and restore from that later on.

 

[eyoungren]

There is a preference setting in iTunes to prevent automatic syncing when a device is connected.

Here's what I do. I have that preference I just mentioned set and I have iTunes set to back up to iCloud. So, all my stuff is stored in iCloud and it's a simple matter of restoring from iCloud.

Note that iCloud does not store your apps. All it does is maintain a record of your apps. When you restore from iCloud, after rebooting, your iPhone will automatically start re-downloading all your apps. That can be a real pain if you are intending to immediately use your phone. Backing up to iTunes includes your apps so when you reboot they will all be there right away.

Sometimes though I will want to make a backup to my computer. In this case I will connect my phone, load up iTunes and in the side panel where it shows my connected phone I right-click on the name and choose Backup (you can also restore this way too). iTunes saves a time/date stamped backup and I can restore from that instead of iCloud if I want.

You have the option of iTunes making backups for you instead of iCloud if you want though. The above works best for me because I don't sync to iTunes very much.

 

[dsmail]

Thanks all for the good advice. I feel a bit more confident about the process now.

Dave