Can I merge backup from dead iphone with new iphone without overwriting

[clueless88]

Hi All--

Trying to make the best of a stupid decision--I avoided iCloud backups because I was doing backups via iTunes weekly for years. Well, life got busy (I got older) and the last backup I did was a couple of years ago. A couple weeks ago I fell into a salt water bay reaching for a pair of glasses that came off my head and managed to fry my old iPhone--I was unable to power down the device and ended up shorting out the phone (also lost my sunglasses). I tried drying it out, but am unable to get the phone to power up. That phone is toast.

So I bought a new iPhone a few days later and have been using it, trying to recreate contact lists. Is there a way of retrieving information like contacts, messages, photos from the backup of the old phone and merging it without overwriting/erasing the information on the new phone via iTunes?

In case anyone is wondering, I have enabled the iCloud backup function on the new phone. Could I turn off iCloud backup, then hook up new iphone to the PC that has iTunes (and old backup), restore old backup on new phone, then turn on iCloud? Would that result in the iPhone and the cloud to sync and merge information?

Thank you so much in advance!

Thank you in advance!

 

[velocityg4]

I haven't done that scenario.

But when I was going back and forth between Android. I started using a new iPhone off an old backup and had it synced to icloud. Using it for several months.

However, I had been using Android for a while between iPhones. The Android had old message data from a prior iPhone. Plus all the new text messages between iPhones. I wanted all those synced onto iCloud.

1. First just to be safe. I made manual backups of everything.
2. Synced my current iPhone with iCloud. Then turned off the iCloud sync.
3. Wiped old iPhone and transferred data from Android.
4. Deleted old text messages in the date range that were already in iCloud.
5. Turned on iCloud sync on old iPhone.
6. The data merged without a problem. Filling in my SMS gap.
7. Turned iCloud sync back on. On my new iPhone and everything was still fine.

So, yes. I'd say everything will be fine. Just to be safe.

1. Make an iTunes backup of your current iPhone.
2. Sync it to iCloud.
3. Factory reset the phone.
4. Restore from old backup.
5. Sync to iCloud.
6. It should now be merged. The only duplicates there should be. Would be anything you've added to your new iPhone. Which existed in your old backup.

 

[clueless88]

@velocityg4—thank you for your help! Will let you know how things go. If things go the way we hope it goes—picking off the duplicates may be therapeutic!

 

[eyoungren]

Hi All--

Trying to make the best of a stupid decision--I avoided iCloud backups because I was doing backups via iTunes weekly for years. Well, life got busy (I got older) and the last backup I did was a couple of years ago. A couple weeks ago I fell into a salt water bay reaching for a pair of glasses that came off my head and managed to fry my old iPhone--I was unable to power down the device and ended up shorting out the phone (also lost my sunglasses). I tried drying it out, but am unable to get the phone to power up. That phone is toast.

So I bought a new iPhone a few days later and have been using it, trying to recreate contact lists. Is there a way of retrieving information like contacts, messages, photos from the backup of the old phone and merging it without overwriting/erasing the information on the new phone via iTunes?

In case anyone is wondering, I have enabled the iCloud backup function on the new phone. Could I turn off iCloud backup, then hook up new iphone to the PC that has iTunes (and old backup), restore old backup on new phone, then turn on iCloud? Would that result in the iPhone and the cloud to sync and merge information?

Thank you so much in advance!

Thank you in advance!

Your situation is one reason I do not store everything just in a backup, iTunes, iCloud or otherwise.

My contacts are with Google. I can restore all of them to any device just by adding the account. All my email accounts are IMAP - same thing, and I can access that email via webmail if I need to. Pictures and video are automatically uploaded to Dropbox, independently of iCloud. Messages are iCloud. Notes and reminders are attached to my various accounts.

Going forward, possibly something to consider - not keeping all your eggs in one basket. Having multiple copies of your data in more than one place can be useful.

 

[clueless88]

@velocityg4 -- I went ahead and did the first 3 steps that you noted and then for the next 2 hours kept having the backup restoration process fail due to my phone disconnecting from the computer--tried different usb ports, different Apple lightning cables, itunes reboot, computer reboot to no avail. I copied the latest backup file from the mobile sync folder as well as the itunes folder from music and pasted them i the corresponding locations on another Windows PC. The backup restoration took a while, but went smoothly. Sync'ed with the cloud. My backup was a bit over a year ago so any messages for that 12 month period are gone (as well as the photos). Definitely a great lesson learned and am glad that it was only a year that I lost.

@eyoungren -- great advice about redundancy in backups! I will continue to backup locally, as well as to iCloud, will also take advantage of Dropbox. Thankfully none of my email accounts are POP, so I still have access to all of the IMAP email messages.

Bottom line--backup often!

Thank you both for your help!

 

[eyoungren]

@velocityg4 -- I went ahead and did the first 3 steps that you noted and then for the next 2 hours kept having the backup restoration process fail due to my phone disconnecting from the computer--tried different usb ports, different Apple lightning cables, itunes reboot, computer reboot to no avail. I copied the latest backup file from the mobile sync folder as well as the itunes folder from music and pasted them i the corresponding locations on another Windows PC. The backup restoration took a while, but went smoothly. Sync'ed with the cloud. My backup was a bit over a year ago so any messages for that 12 month period are gone (as well as the photos). Definitely a great lesson learned and am glad that it was only a year that I lost.

@eyoungren -- great advice about redundancy in backups! I will continue to backup locally, as well as to iCloud, will also take advantage of Dropbox. Thankfully none of my email accounts are POP, so I still have access to all of the IMAP email messages.

Bottom line--backup often!

Thank you both for your help!

I brought up Dropbox because I've had that since 2011. But Google Photos also does photo backup as well. There are others out there.

Since I'm also using the Photos aspect of iCloud I get my photos on an iDevice and with Dropbox it's any device that is running Dropbox. It's nice not to have to think about new photos showing up on all my connected devices.

Periodically, I'll pull everything out of the Camera Uploads folder (Dropbox) and drop it somewhere else (a backup). Since my Mac hard drives also get backed up to my NAS then I also have Dropbox backed up (with the photos). And weekly a backup gets made from my Macs TO Dropbox itself.

Overkill maybe - but I've been in your spot before (and worse).