iPhone Backup and Time Machine bug

Hi all Mac users,

I would like to share an issue with the iPhone backup process and a bug with the new Mac OS 10.5 Time Machine.

First, if you synch your iPhone with your Apple computer on a regular basis, the SMS, configuration and Notes are saved in the folder /Users/joe/Library/Application Support/MobileSync (replace joe by your user account name). The information in this folder is replaced by the latest data from your iPhone at each synch, wiping out all previous data. There is no possibility to restore a old backup.

What happened to me: I went to the Genius Bar at the Apple Store because of a issue with synching my contacts. The guy took the phone and went in the back to reinstall the iPhone with a clean copy of the OS 1.1.3. When he synch it with my MacBook, it wipe out my previous backup and replace it with the fresh installation with not personal data. By doing so, I have lost all my customization, SMS, Notes, network key, etc.

Second, I then try to look in Time Machine to restore a older version of my iPhone data. Horror! This folder is excluded from the Time Machine backup. I spent an hour with the Apple tech to try to make him understand that this is a major issue and I have lost 1Gb of data.

Conclusion, don't trust Time Machine to keep a backup of your iPhone data. I will continue to work on some workaround on this issue until Apple fix the problem with Time Machine and post my progress here.


Solution: Manually move the backup of your iPhone from /Users/joe/Library/Application Support/MobileSync to another folder on your Mac and if you want to use this backup follow the steps:
1) Click Restore
2) The iPhone do a backup of its latest data
3) While the iPhone is reinstalling the software, swap/replace the content of the MobileSync folder with your old backup
4) When iTunes ask you to restore your data go for it and your iPhone will be restore with the old backup

I did it a couple of times and it works each time.


Rich