Fresh install - restore messages

[surfologist87]

I did a fresh 8.1 install, and I have a couple years of messages that are important to me that I would like to keep. I looked into it and found a great tutorial using ibackupbot to inject them into a backup so everything is fresh and you have all of your messages. Does this method still work for ios 8?
I tried but couldn't get the backup to restore.miss could have done something wrong. Willing to try it again, just wondering if anyone had any experience with this.

While I'm at it, I am also looking to restore camera roll. About 2500 photos worth, and that seems to be tricky. Any ideas for how to go about that the easiest way?

I've done hours of research and tried Dropbox, Google drive, transferring using a Cell brite but nothing works properly. Im wondering if I should just pay for some more icloud and back up and restore pictures. I don't want to restore backup anymore because it's been backed up and restored for years on dozens of phones (I've switched around a lot) and jail broken multiple times. Time for something fresh.

Thank you so much in advance.

 

[Imory]

I did a fresh 8.1 install, and I have a couple years of messages that are important to me that I would like to keep. I looked into it and found a great tutorial using ibackupbot to inject them into a backup so everything is fresh and you have all of your messages. Does this method still work for ios 8?
I tried but couldn't get the backup to restore.miss could have done something wrong. Willing to try it again, just wondering if anyone had any experience with this.

While I'm at it, I am also looking to restore camera roll. About 2500 photos worth, and that seems to be tricky. Any ideas for how to go about that the easiest way?

I've done hours of research and tried Dropbox, Google drive, transferring using a Cell brite but nothing works properly. I wondering if I should just pay for some more icloud and back up and restore pictures. I don't want to restore backup anymore because it's been backed up and restored for years on dozens of phones (I've switched around a lot) and Klondike multiple times. Time for something fresh.

Thank you so much in advance.

Regarding iMessage, why not use a backup by iCloud? That will be as fresh as it can get without setting the phone as completely new. As far as I know, iCloud will only backup the most essential personal data you have in terms of contacts, messages, mail etc (you can change it for your own needs).

Unless you use iTunes when backing up, the iCloud backup is pretty "lean". It won't save any corrupt data or cached storage, unless of course there's a problem you've encountered in iMessage.

 

[surfologist87]

I didn't think there is a way to restore imessages and sms, is that possible? I have about 4 gb worth of data in the messages app, and about 25 gb in the camera roll.

 

[Imory]

I didn't think there is a way to restore imessages and sms, is that possible? I have about 4 gb worth of data in the messages app, and about 25 gb in the camera roll.

Oh I see. Well, iCloud will save your messages, but unless you've purchased more storage than the original plan, you'll only get 5 GB of cloud storage. That's too small for you. You could purchase more, but that is going to cost you.

Is there no way to sync/save the pictures to your PC/Mac and then use iTunes to sync it back? Unfortunately I don't really have any experience of iTunes anymore since I haven't had to use it for years (thank god).

 

[wx4olf]

I didn't think there is a way to restore imessages and sms, is that possible? I have about 4 gb worth of data in the messages app, and about 25 gb in the camera roll.

I believe if you search this forum on the topic you should be able to find the specifics on how to do this with the messages. Basically you make an unencrypted backup of your old device, copy the messages database, backup the new device, copy the messages database to this backup, and then restore from this backup so that you have a "clean" restore with your old messages. You just need a piece of software that can browse iPhone backups and there are several of these programs around (I can't remember the one I used to do exactly this when we moved my wife from the 5 to the 6 last month).

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Just for clarification it appears what I described is similar to the link you referred to and yes it did work on iOS 8

 

[rza49311]

I used the rollit app to get pics transferred into new iPhone camera roll. Worked perfectly.

 

[Imory]

I believe if you search this forum on the topic you should be able to find the specifics on how to do this with the messages. Basically you make an unencrypted backup of your old device, copy the messages database, backup the new device, copy the messages database to this backup, and then restore from this backup so that you have a "clean" restore with your old messages. You just need a piece of software that can browse iPhone backups and there are several of these programs around (I can't remember the one I used to do exactly this when we moved my wife from the 5 to the 6 last month).

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Just for clarification it appears what I described is similar to the link you referred to and yes it did work on iOS 8

Doesn't sound too bad. Although I'd love to hear the differences between the completely "clean" install that you did and a simple backup from iCloud. I've heard that the the backup you do from iCloud is significantly smaller and more simplistic than the one you do from iTunes which is a complete backup of pretty much everything.

 

[surfologist87]

I believe ...

Thanks. I will give that a shot again. Glad to see it works on ios 8. I will have to sit down and reread all of the steps, i most likely just missed something.

Oh I see...

I have never seen icloud back up messages, youre saying if you purchase a plan, say the 200 GB plan, it will do messages too? Thats pretty cool, because it is only $3.99 so maybe i can try it for a month and see. Because thatll do my pictures too.

I was also thinking of airdropping the photos a hundred or two at a time, lol.

 

[Imory]

I have never seen icloud back up messages, youre saying if you purchase a plan, say the 200 GB plan, it will do messages too? Thats pretty cool, because it is only $3.99 so maybe i can try it for a month and see. Because thatll do my pictures too.

I was also thinking of airdropping the photos a hundred or two at a time, lol.

Yeah! Here's what's included in an iCloud backup according to Apple.

Here’s what iCloud backs up:

Purchase history for music, movies, TV shows, apps, and books

Your iCloud backup includes information about the content you have purchased, but not the purchased content itself. When you restore from an iCloud backup, your purchased content is automatically downloaded from the iTunes Store, App Store, or iBooks Store. Some types of content aren’t downloaded automatically in all countries, and previous purchases may be unavailable if they have been refunded or are no longer available in the store. For more information, see the Apple Support article iTunes in the Cloud availability by country. Some types of content aren’t available in all countries. For more information, see the Apple Support article What can I buy from the iTunes Store in my country?

Photos and videos on your iOS devices

Device settings

App data

Home screen and app organization

iMessage, text (SMS), and MMS messages

Ringtones

Visual Voicemail

Your iOS device backup only includes data and settings stored on your device.

It doesn’t include data already stored in iCloud, for example contacts, calendars, bookmarks, mail messages, notes, shared photo albums, iCloud Photo Library beta, My Photo Stream, and documents you save in iCloud using iOS apps and Mac apps.