Where are contacts stored? (Lost contacts)

[bajntime]

I have lost all of my contacts. I was having problems with my iphone and did a restore, not from backup. Now the iphone is working properly but I lost my contacts in the process.

I checked my itunes backups but it only says today's date.

I did a time machine backup of my whole computer which included itunes. I am thinking there should be a folder with my contacts in that but I am unable to locate it.

All of my contacts where originally added to my iphone manually.

Please help, I do not know where to find the contacts and I am very worried about being able to recover them.

 

[Gav2k]

There contained in a backup but iTunes deletes past backups. To stop it happening again set iTunes to sync you address book.

 

[bajntime]

Could I recover them by just restoring itunes from the backup i created a few days ago? Not a itunes backup, but a whole computer backup onto a hard drive via time machine?

 

[Small White Car]

They should have been synced to address book. Are they not still in there? If so, just re-sync to the phone.

If not, try activating Time Machine while inside Address Book. That program is aware of Time Machine and can restore contacts within itself.

Or did you never sync your contacts with the computer in the first place?

 

[bajntime]

I am not sure. I have had the phone for about 6 months. I manually entered all of my phone numbers ages ago. Whenever plug into itunes & sync it says it is backing up.

I never specifically synced address book.

 

[bajntime]

Doesn't Itunes back up your contacts when you sync?
I never specifically backed up my contacts but assumed they would be backed up when I synced with itunes.