Recovering Personal Info after clean Install

[iAdamator]

I've always wondered, when people do a fresh install, what about all your personal info, apps, etc? You can obviously just download apps again one by one. And iCould would restore things like contacts... but like for me, I have iMessages that go back YEARS, in particular with my now wife. (I still have the very first message we ever sent.)

It's that last thing the most that's kept me from ever doing a clean install.

Is there a way to do a clean install and recover something like iMessages?

 

[stringent]

You would need a program like PhoneView or iExplorer to export your message threads into a PDF which can be saved to your computer.

These can't be put back in (as far as I know) but at least you will still have them in some form for when you feel nostalgic.

 

[Stuke00]

I've always wondered, when people do a fresh install, what about all your personal info, apps, etc? You can obviously just download apps again one by one. And iCould would restore things like contacts... but like for me, I have iMessages that go back YEARS, in particular with my now wife. (I still have the very first message we ever sent.)

It's that last thing the most that's kept me from ever doing a clean install.

Is there a way to do a clean install and recover something like iMessages?

I am pretty sure a program called iTools would work for this. But I cannot promise how it will work restoring messages to an iOS 8 phone.

http://www.itools.cn/multi_lang_pc_download.htm

You can still do a 'clean install' but then restore your iTunes backup. This will restore all your messages, etc.

 

[g35]

I've always wondered, when people do a fresh install, what about all your personal info, apps, etc? You can obviously just download apps again one by one. And iCould would restore things like contacts... but like for me, I have iMessages that go back YEARS, in particular with my now wife. (I still have the very first message we ever sent.)

It's that last thing the most that's kept me from ever doing a clean install.

Is there a way to do a clean install and recover something like iMessages?

There are ways as the other posters have mentioned. But beware as sometimes this will corrupt your backup and not work properly.

One thing you can do right now to protect against this forever is to find the backup folder on your computer. First, do an iTunes backup. Then find the folder (google for PC or Mac location). Copy the folder to a USB drive, or Dropbox, or whatever. It may take a long time as it will be a large folder with many small files. But once this folder is copied to a safe place, and not messed with or deleted, you will have a backup of your messages and everything forever.

The nice thing is it can be restored onto any future version of iOS (but not past). So if it's a 7.1.2 backup, you can put it onto any iPhone running 7.1.2 or later, even your iPhone 7 running iOS 10 or whatever.

To restore from this backup in the future, you'd just put it back into that same location on your computer, then iTunes will let you restore from it. Remember, don't remove it from its 'safe place' on the USB stick or whatever. Just copy it back onto the computer.

That way you could do a clean install of iOS now, and if in 3 years you want to pull up your wife's iMessages, you can restore those onto your future phone. It's a bit cumbersome but for me, I don't care so much about looking at the old iMessages every day as much as I'd like to have them stored in a safe place for peace of mind in the future.

 

[iAdamator]

That is a really cool thing to know, so thanks. Might try that.

Basically it would let me "add" the messages into a new backup?


This may be a dumb question but I just want to know for the record: If you do a clean install and then restore from a backup, you are defeating the purpose of a clean install, correct?

 

[Stuke00]

That is a really cool thing to know, so thanks. Might try that.

Basically it would let me "add" the messages into a new backup?


This may be a dumb question but I just want to know for the record: If you do a clean install and then restore from a backup, you are defeating the purpose of a clean install, correct?

Not necessarily. Your backup doesn't contain system files. Just user and app data. Might have issues with settings, but you can do a reset all settings.

 

[iAdamator]

Huh, that answer surprises me. Maybe I will just do that then. That was nearly my whole point of this thread.

I had just installed iOS 8 over 7. I guess if I clean install, then restore from backup I might be better off?