Restore iPhone 3GS from iPhone 4?

[Wildog27]

Had an issue arise that I hope someone will be able to help. My wife's iPhone 4 was stolen recently (no, we didn't have Find my iPhone turned on; yes, it was stupid of us not to do that). Thankfully, we have my dad's barely used 3GS that we've been able to transfer to her number in order for her to use until the iPhone 5 (or whatever) comes out later this year.

What we'd like to do is restore her old settings from her iPhone 4 that she had synced to her MacBook and get all of her settings and such back. However, when we plug it in, no option to restore from a backup comes up. Is there something we can do to force that to happen or is it even possible to restore a 3GS from an iPhone 4 backup? My dad had some info on it when he used it. Would we have to restore it to factory settings (without backing up its current state) and then try to set up as a new device?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Applejuiced]

You sure you have the iphone 4 backup file saved on that computer right?
What you have to do is plug in the 3GS and hit restore.
Once its done updating and restoring to the latest 5.0.1 it will ask you if you want to restore from backup or setup as new.
Select restore from backup and pick from the drop down box one of the available backup files.
You can restore a 3GS from an i4 backup, that is not a problem as long as the 3GS runs the latest firmware or at least the firmware version the i4 backup file was created on.

 

[Wildog27]

Worked perfectly. Thanks.

 

[Applejuiced]

Nice, congrats.