Restored an iPad to the wrong backup

[sunandsurf]

I think I messed up royally. My daughter's iPad just died so I got a replacement, took it home, and wanted to restore the iPad to the last manual backup using my iMac.

When I was faced with the question of treating the iPad as a new iPad or to restore it from a backup, I choose the backup.

My big mistake was NOT looking at the drop down list. I saw my daughter's name and automatically used it. What I forgot is that my daughter has 2 iPads. One for personal use and one for school. I erroneously selected the one for school when I should have used the drop down list and chosen the one for personal use.

The restore process went through and now I'm wondering how to UNDO what I did and restore it from my daughter's personal use backup.

What I'm afraid of doing is erasing anything on her school iPad.

I'm hoping that whatever I do will affect only this personal use iPad. This is extremely important as you can imagine. I would not want to erase anything on her school iPad.

So if there is a way to restore this personal use iPad (which I accidentally turned into a clone of her school iPad), I'm all ears.

Thank you very much.

 

[gnasher729]

Start iTunes. Plug-in the iPad. Click on the iPad icon on the top left of the window. Tap on Settings / Summary on the left hand side close to the top. It should show one section "Backup", and there you can tap on "Restore Backup".

 

[sunandsurf]

I'm on the road now but will try it when I get home; thanks.

 

[masotime]

You can theoretically restore any specific backup to any number of devices - they don't override each other as a result. So each backup is like a fixed template that can be cloned to any device, provided the device has enough space.

Of course, you'll still need to login to iCloud to link to your passwords, Find My iPhone etc. etc.

 

[sunandsurf]

Thank you very much for your comments. I went way overboard in worrying about what I had done. For a moment, I thought I had permanently created 2 iPads with the same info. Thankfully, you guys are right. The universe is now back in balance and my daughter's personal iPad is back to what it used to be. It definitely highlights the importance of backing things up! Thank you again for helping me out.