Jailbreak Restore

Quick question on restoring after a jailbreak...

I know that you can continue to sync with iTunes after jailbreaking, which means that iTunes should still be up to date with all of the photos, apps, contacts, etc that you have added to your phone while jailbroken.

If/when you wanted to restore your phone to 'factory' condition after a jailbreak however, would doing so revert it back to the point in time right before the initial jailbreak or would it restore it but still keep the latest information? I know you go in and choose the IPSW file when you do the restore, so I just want to confirm that that particular files get updated with each subsequent sync.

I hope that makes sense. I basically just want to make sure that I wouldn't lose all of the information I've added to my phone over the course of a long time being jailbroken.

Thanks.

 

So I can just choose the option to 'restore', select my IPSW file and then it'll take care of itself?

 

Sorry for the back and forth but I just want to make sure I understand; I just jailbroke my phone for the first time this weekend...

I have a singular IPSW file that I have to navigate to in order to jailbreak. At one point this weekend, I needed to restore my phone and I did so by putting it into DFU mode and then choosing to 'restore from a previous version' in iTunes by navigating to the same IPSW file I chose when initially jailbreaking. Everything worked great and my phone was good as new and right back where it had been prior to jailbreaking. It wasn't an issue in this instance though because it had only been a few hours since I initially jailbroke it so I hadn't really made any changes to the phone.

However, if I need to do a restore several months from now, would I follow the exact same process? And if I do, would it wipe my phone while still keeping all of my most recent information?

Also, probably on a similar note, should I do a backup of my phone every time I sync now that it's jailbroken?

Again, sorry. If there is a good article or thread out there that walks me through all of this, please let me know.