What is An iPhone Backup File?

What is an iPhone backup file and where to find it?

An iTunes backup includes nearly all of your device’s data and settings. These include text messages, iMessages, photos, videos, contacts, call history, FaceTime history, voice notes, calendar events, music, Touch ID settings, Apple Pay information and settings, and various types of app data. Your Activity, Health, and Keychain data can also be included into the iTunes backup file, but you have to use Encrypted Backup in iTunes. (Also read: How to make iTunes Backup files)

To sum up, an iPhone backup file is a copy of the data on your iPhone. If you enabled the auto backup feature, each time you sync your iOS device (iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch) to iTunes or your iCloud account, an automatic backup is made. By default, your computer saves backups made in iTunes to the Backup folder in your Users folder. The location of the Backup folder varies by operating system. If you have an iPhone backup file generated in iTunes, you can find this file manually here:

Windows XP:

C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Application Data\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup\

Windows Vista, Windows 7 and 8:

C:\Users\user\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup

Mac OS X:

~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/

Though you can copy the Backup folder, you should never move it to a different folder, external drive, or network drive. Any action of edit, relocate, or rename of your iTunes backup files might ruin the files. To restore from a relocated backup file, you need to move it back to the default location or the file won’t work. Backups serve as a safe copy of your entire device. So while you might be able to view or access a backup file’s contents, the contents usually aren’t stored in a format that you can read. However, these data can be easily read and extracted with professional iPhone recovery software.

What are iPhone backup files for?

Generally speaking iTunes and iCloud backup files ensure that you have a copy of your data that you could restore from in the event of data loss. Also, an iPhone backup file makes it much easier to migrate your old data to a new iPhone or other iOS devices. You can restore the new phone to a previous backup of your old phone so that all your contacts, messages, notes, calls and other data appear on the new device.

How to read and extract an iPhone backup?

To check the iPhone backups and extract files, you can download H Data iPhone data recovery software. Not only does it enable you to view and extract your iPhone backup files, but it is also able to recover deleted data from your iOS devices.

Step 1. Free download H Data iPhone Recovery and install it on your computer. Connect iPhone to computer, select View and Restore Files from iTunes Backups. Choose an iTunes backup file and click SCAN. If you can’t access your iPhone for the moment, you can also click Browse for iTunes Backups to manually select an iTunes backup file that is in your computer.

Step 2. Now the software will scan and extract existing and deleted data contained in your iPhone backup file. Once the scan is completed, the software will display how much data had been discovered.You will be able to see all the recoverable files in different categories. Click on the categories on the left and freely check for details. If you want any of these files to be extracted to your computer, simply select them and click on the Export Selected Records.