Among the many important features that you get to enjoy with your iPhone, one is the ability to backup your device. There are different options available for backing up iPhones, including iTunes and iCloud, and you can use one as you deem comfortable. If you don’t know how to create iTunes backup, this article will guide you through the process. However, before that, let’s first try to find out why exactly backups are so important.
Jump To Section:
- What’s The Need Of iPhone Backups?
- How To Create iTunes Backup On Your Computer?
- How To Create Encrypted iTunes Backup?
What’s The Need Of iPhone Backups?
Well, it’s quite an interesting question. The simplest answer could be that our iPhones are probably among most important of all our valuable possessions and they need some sort of protection for whatever they have inside. If you put their financial worth aside, the storage on our phones usually contains most important data that we own from our important documents to photos of once-in-a-lifetime events.
So, in order to make sure that these things remain protected in case of theft or potential damage, backups can turn out to be your primary line of defense.
Apple also issues software updates quite often and before you go on with installing an update, it is often recommended that you backup all your data first. This ensures that if something goes wrong, all your important stuff is backed up.
There may also be instances when you have to upgrade to the latest iPhone models as they hit the market. So, before you make a switch, you should create an iTunes backup or put all your data on iCloud storage and then move to the new phone. When you start using the new iPhone, you can simply restore your backup that you had created using iTunes from the previous iPhone.
With so many options available for backing up iPhones, iTunes backup is probably the safest of them all as it keeps everything right at your disposal.
How To Create iTunes Backup On Your Computer?
As mentioned earlier, it is always a great idea to have your backups stored locally on your computer. It simply means that you know there’s backup with and you’re in control. Also, you know exactly what you had backed up in any particular iTunes backup as well.
When it comes to creating iTunes backups, it’s pretty easy. Some years back, you had to plug your idevice into your Mac and then sync everything, but now with iTunes Match things have changed a lot. Nevertheless, it’s still quite a useful software and can provide you with complete backup of your iPhone within minutes.
Let’s take a look at how you can create an iTunes backup.
- First of all, connect your iPhone to PC or Mac.
- Launch iTunes
- In top left corner there will be a phone icon showing up, click it and you will enter your device’s menu
- If you’ve selected Summary in left side column, there will be three boxes that you can see in main pane and the middle one will be entitled as Backups.
- Here you will have two sections, automatic backup and manual backup, and usually the automatic backup option is what your iPhone is set up to which keeps backing up your device content to iCloud. However, if you want to keep local backups, you can select ‘This Computer’ option here which will ensure that a local backup is created every time you connect your device to your computer.
- Towards the right side you will be able to find an option to create manual backups. You have to click ‘Backup Now’ option for that. The time it will take for creating your iTunes Backup will, however, depend on the data you have on your iPhone. Right in front of this option, you’ll have a ‘Restore from Backup’ button as well. That’s where you can actually restore your lost content in case if something goes wrong.
That’s all about creating an iTunes backup. However, if you are wondering that what a backup includes in itself then here it is.
Your backups contain all the photos that are stored on your iOS device, your contacts, Safari bookmarks, calendar accounts, call history, notes, profiles and different other data that resides on your iPhone. Keep in mind, however, that no extra copies are made by iTunes backup for any of your media files. So, if you have any music, films or apps that you had purchased using iTunes must be downloaded from scratch. However, this is done automatically when you’ll restore your iPhone from a backup.
How To Create Encrypted iTunes Backup?
With iTunes you can create another type of backup i.e. encrypted backup. So, if you have any kind of sensitive information stored in your iPhone, going for an encrypted iTunes backupwould give you an added security layer. You will only be able to access the backup after providing a password which you have to create while encrypting the backup.
The process of creating encrypted backups is pretty much the same as standard backups. You can create them automatically as well as manually and just have to mark the encrypt checkbox before hitting the ‘Create Backup’ button. An additional step, when creating the backup for the first time, would be to select your password.
However, keep it in mind that Apple won’t know your password and you have to keep it safe somewhere. If you forget it, the backup will be useless until you recall it and provide it at the time of restore. Because of additional security, some additional data is added by Apple that’s withheld from standard version. It includes some information from Health app and the password keychain.
So, whichever option you want to try for your iTunes backup, you can go with it. The process is the same more or less for creating both types of backups. And, it’s just the matter of what type of security you need with your backups and you should decide accordingly.
Check other Stuff:
- How To Create Space On A Mac By Deleting Any Old Backups
- How to Restore Your iPhone, iPad From A Backup
- How To Backup All Your Health And Fitness Data On Apple Watch
- Step By Step Guide For Restoring Mac From Backup