Possible to restore only certain parts of a backup?

[ideal.dreams]

I upgraded my iPhone 5 to iOS 7 last night and restored from a backup. I've been restoring from the same backup since my iPhone 3GS. I want to start fresh on iOS 7 and get rid of all of the legacy files from the previous iOS versions as well as leftover data from all of my past jailbreaks. HOWEVER, I do not want to lose app data (i.e. game progress, settings, etc) nor do I want to lose text messages.

Is it possible to modify the backup of my phone so I can delete the stuff I don't want restored to the new copy of iOS 7?

 

[mactmaster]

iBackupBot should be able to do this but it doesn't support iOS 7. What you can do is downgrade to iOS 6, then use iBackupBot to restore only the parts that you want onto the phone and finally upgrade to iOS 7.

I've always done this, I used to just restore my text messages. I had them from iPhone OS 1.0 till iOS 5. After that I started doing a clean wipe and didn't bother restoring the text messages. I archive them on the computer though.

 

[sportsfrk214]

This is something I've worried about to. I have lots of progress on my games I don't want to lose, and restoring from backup seems like my only option.

 

[HeyKatie]

iExplorer will let you I believe I've only tried it with game data so far but it has all of the options for photos, backups, iCloud.

 

[Jigga]

iBackupBot should be able to do this but it doesn't support iOS 7. What you can do is downgrade to iOS 6, then use iBackupBot to restore only the parts that you want onto the phone and finally upgrade to iOS 7.

I've always done this, I used to just restore my text messages. I had them from iPhone OS 1.0 till iOS 5. After that I started doing a clean wipe and didn't bother restoring the text messages. I archive them on the computer though.

Does it restore MMS?

 

[ideal.dreams]

I just spoke to an Apple advisor about this and she recommended that I switch to iCloud backup. She said that iCloud back up does not back up every single file on the phone, but rather important files like documents, app data, settings, and messages. I am going to make a back up to iCloud and then restore from that back up afterwards. Hopefully that will weed out all of the old legacy files from older versions of iOS and previous jailbreaks.

 

[mactmaster]

Does it restore MMS?

You can select which files to restore so if you want you can restore the entire SMS directory containing the database file and all the attachments.

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I just spoke to an Apple advisor about this and she recommended that I switch to iCloud backup. She said that iCloud back up does not back up every single file on the phone, but rather important files like documents, app data, settings, and messages. I am going to make a back up to iCloud and then restore from that back up afterwards. Hopefully that will weed out all of the old legacy files from older versions of iOS and previous jailbreaks.

I prefer an iTunes backup because the restore process is shorter. The few times I've tried restoring from an iCloud backup, it took a while to finish installing all the apps. Also, I have a few apps installed that are no longer on the App Store and those need to be installed from my local iTunes library.

 

[ideal.dreams]

iExplorer will let you I believe I've only tried it with game data so far but it has all of the options for photos, backups, iCloud.

Can you walk me through how I'd go about doing this? I'm viewing my phone through iExplorer and I'm only able to EXPORT my messages and app data, I can't seem to find a way to import them? Maybe I'm missing something?

 

[jtfolden]

Can you walk me through how I'd go about doing this? I'm viewing my phone through iExplorer and I'm only able to EXPORT my messages and app data, I can't seem to find a way to import them? Maybe I'm missing something?

I did something similar for iOS 7 GM myself, just wanted to save my photos and select App data.

Once you re-install an app, simply navigate to it's Documents folder, then right-click (or control-click) and choose "Add Files..." then you can select the contents of the App's Documents folder you previously pulled from the iPhone.