Iphone 3gs back up (Worried)

[millsy91]

Hello all....

Right here we go.....

I had my iphone backed up on my laptop via itunes, I then reformatted my laptop and re loaded itunes back on it. Now when I did this before I lost all my contacts and I cant afford for this to happen again so im asking advice before I plug the iphone back in and lose it all. Can someone please explain in simple terms how I go about backing it up again and NOT to lose all 327 contacts on it.

Thanking all in advance.

David

 

[Gokunama]

Probably the most reliable back up and restore for all fields and photos would be an vCard app that can share multiple contacts. You'll have to resort all the contacts into groups again, but that would be easy with a good contact managing app.

[app]BACKUP!Contacts[/app]
[app]Contacts Tool[/app] - I prefer this one, cause it backs up your contacts on your iPhone before sending the file, so if something goes wrong, you can quickly revert to the original contact info.

Some other apps to try but can't be so sure will sync over all fields are (they've worked for four addresses, for email addresses, and for phone numbers).

[app]iDrive Contacts[/app] - mostly syncs your groups back as well.
[app]PhoneCopy[/app] - no group support.
[app]Contacts Backup Over Cloud[/app] - Has worked beuatifully for me, restoring all contacts, all fields, and all contacts back to their respective groups, but I've read one guy's contacts didn(t sync back reliably, so I'd stick with vCards for more reliability.

 

[TLewis]

If you're comfortable with the idea, you might want to consider putting your contacts in the cloud. I have all my contacts, email accounts, and calendars in the cloud, and it's really nice. I don't have to connect to itunes all that often, and, when I do, it's mainly for backing up app configuration (screen locations, settings, etc.). Best of all, in the worst case scenario (iphone is stolen, pc/mac is stolen, house burns down, dog runs away, etc. , I can recover all of my contacts, email messages, and calendars.

Gmail, hotmail, and mobileme ($$) all support this.

 

[Gokunama]

MobileMe is excellent for contacts, but an expensive service.

Gmail doesn't support all the fields that are supported in the iPhone address book.

How does hotmail do?

 

[TLewis]

How does hotmail do?

Don't know. I happen to use mobileme, but that's only because MM is the cheapest service that properly supports multiple contact groups.