I recently jailbroke my phone and have a question about the last backup I did before I jailbroke. Is there any reason I should save that backup somewhere for restoring purposes? In other words, is that backup useful to me in any way since it was the last backup I did before I jailbroke? If so, what should I do with it? I have already synced my phone since I jaibroke so a new backup has been created. Is my last "pre-jailbreak" backup gone forever now?
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
question about last backup before jailbreaking
- Thread starter psywzrd
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Yes you want to keep it. I makes life easier when updating the newest FW. IF you restore you phone using the JB backup you will still have the JB settings (depending on what you have downloaded)
I'm confused. You sound as if you're telling me to restore from a backup created after my phone was jailbroken - that's not what I'm asking. I did one final backup before I jailbroke my phone - that is the backup I'm inquiring about. Since I have already synced my phone since I jailbroke (and created a post-jailbreak backup), is my last backup before I jailbroke gone forever I'm on a Mac and I have a Time Machine so I'm hoping that if I need that backup, there's a way for me to retrieve it.
You're saying that an iTunes Backup, which knows nothing about jb, backs up jb information? If so, how?
He's wrong. Your jailbroken apps are on a different partition, that iTunes doesn't see.
If this is true, is my last backup before I jailbroke the same as the first backup after I jailbroke? I wouldn't think so but I'm still trying to figure out if I need that last pre-jailbreak backup.
Sorry it wasn't clear enough. You want to keep the backup previous to JB. If you restore from a backup that was taken while you were JB you will still have some of the settings.
if you don't believe me google it. if you had categories then when you backup you won't be able to see those apps that were in categories. same with make it mine if you restore from backup you will still have the custom banner. THIS IF ONLY IF YOU BACKUP FROM A BACKUP MADE WHILE YOU WERE JB.
heres one example
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/596557/
pre-jb backup
@Psy
The reason you might want to keep that backup is that backups that are made in iTunes (when you sync and when you do them yourself) sometimes get corrupted. This way you have a "backup for your backup" kinda thing!
Plus these things are hidden in the deep folder structures of your OS and are usually not named "iPhone backup." However, if you "must delete it" you can google some info as to where they're located and you should be able to turn something up in no time.
Regarding your "post-jb" backups, it is true that your backup saves some jb data; however it's mostly app settings, etc. (such as info about apps you may have put into folders while using Categories, etc. - which is why you want to delete any Categories folders before you restore.)
There's a package in Cydia called AptBackup which creates a "text file" stored on the partition of your phone which does backup in iTunes.
The next time you restore and need to re-jb (fw update for example,) AptBackup is the first thing you download from Cydia after you jb (and restored your iphone backup with iTunes.)
You launch the app and tap the "restore" button and the app tells you to wait a few minutes and it then reads the "text file" from the backup and automatically reinstalls and reconfigures every jb app/theme.
Time-wise "your mileage may vary" (depending of number of Cydia pkgs installed,) but eventually...Voila! Your phone is back to jb with themes applied etc.
I think it's pretty cool!
@Psy
The reason you might want to keep that backup is that backups that are made in iTunes (when you sync and when you do them yourself) sometimes get corrupted. This way you have a "backup for your backup" kinda thing!
Plus these things are hidden in the deep folder structures of your OS and are usually not named "iPhone backup." However, if you "must delete it" you can google some info as to where they're located and you should be able to turn something up in no time. Regarding your "post-jb" backups, it is true that your backup saves some jb data; however it's mostly app settings, etc. (such as info about apps you may have put into folders while using Categories, etc. - which is why you want to delete any Categories folders before you restore.)
There's a package in Cydia called AptBackup which creates a "text file" stored on the partition of your phone which does backup in iTunes.
The next time you restore and need to re-jb (fw update for example,) AptBackup is the first thing you download from Cydia after you jb (and restored your iphone backup with iTunes.)
You launch the app and tap the "restore" button and the app tells you to wait a few minutes and it then reads the "text file" from the backup and automatically reinstalls and reconfigures every jb app/theme.
Time-wise "your mileage may vary" (depending of number of Cydia pkgs installed,) but eventually...Voila! Your phone is back to jb with themes applied etc.
I think it's pretty cool!
@Psy
The reason you might want to keep that backup is that backups that are made in iTunes (when you sync and when you do them yourself) sometimes get corrupted. This way you have a "backup for your backup" kinda thing!
Regarding your "post-jb" backups, it is true that your backup saves some jb data; however it's mostly app settings, etc. (such as info about apps you may have put into folders while using Categories, etc. - which is why you want to delete any Categories folders before you restore.)
There's a package in Cydia called AptBackup which creates a "text file" stored on the partition of your phone which does backup in iTunes.
The next time you restore and need to re-jb (fw update for example,) AptBackup is the first thing you download from Cydia after you jb (and restored your iphone backup with iTunes.)
You launch the app and tap the "restore" button and the app tells you to wait a few minutes and it then reads the "text file" from the backup and automatically reinstalls and reconfigures every jb app/theme.
Time-wise "your mileage may vary" (depending of number of Cydia pkgs installed,) but eventually...Voila! Your phone is back to jb with themes applied etc.
I think it's pretty cool!
Thank you for that reply. I know where the backups are saved (user/library/application support/mobilesync/backup) but I can't make heads or tails of the files in there. They're all ".mdbackup" files but it looks like there are several created every time you sync. For example, my last pre-jailbreak sync was on December 8th at around 4:30pm and there are 87 .mdbackup files that were created right around that time within a couple of minutes of each other (the files are anywhere between 4 and 852KB). I thought that there would be one backup file created rather than dozens so I have no clue what to do with these files.
iTunes backups
1st of all, given the file path you're giving me, I think it'd be safe to assume that you're using a Mac, am I correct?
I haven't really looked into backups or where they're saved since the days of my 1st gen iphone (which has since been replaced by a 3G!) Back in the day these backups would get HUGE and would hog lots of hard drive space (which is what led me to go looking for them in the 1st place-my hd filled up.)
My recollection is that although every backup did have multiple files, at least you could differentiate them as iTunes would create a separate folder for each backup.
Not sure if that's the case anymore...
Anyway, as I said before, I think it's a good idea to keep these as they may come in handy at some point and considering they don't take up a lot of space anymore, it may not be that big of a deal to allow them to just be there.
1st of all, given the file path you're giving me, I think it'd be safe to assume that you're using a Mac, am I correct?
I haven't really looked into backups or where they're saved since the days of my 1st gen iphone (which has since been replaced by a 3G!
) Back in the day these backups would get HUGE and would hog lots of hard drive space (which is what led me to go looking for them in the 1st place-my hd filled up.)My recollection is that although every backup did have multiple files, at least you could differentiate them as iTunes would create a separate folder for each backup.
Not sure if that's the case anymore...
Anyway, as I said before, I think it's a good idea to keep these as they may come in handy at some point and considering they don't take up a lot of space anymore, it may not be that big of a deal to allow them to just be there.
I really don't want to threadjack, but this seems appropriate. I've been looking for a post/article/whatever that clearly lays out all this business about backups (pre/post-jailbreaking), restoring, etc. I'm totally confused by the following:
- What's in a backup? Is is just user files or does it contain system/OS level files as well?
- What happens when you restore a JB phone from a pre-JB backup (this thread sorta answer that)? What happens when you restore a JB phone with a backup made after JB'ing?
- How would you un-JB your phone? I thought it involved restoring from something, but as you can see I'm confused about all this.
Thanks!
- What's in a backup? Is is just user files or does it contain system/OS level files as well?
- What happens when you restore a JB phone from a pre-JB backup (this thread sorta answer that)? What happens when you restore a JB phone with a backup made after JB'ing?
- How would you un-JB your phone? I thought it involved restoring from something, but as you can see I'm confused about all this.
Thanks!
AFAIK it contains user data. There's no need to back up the OS because you can recreate it by doing a reload of the firmware.
iTunes backup doesn't know anything about JB therefore it doesn't do anything with it, i.e., it doesn't back up JB data and doesn't restore it.
You un-JB your phone by doing an iTunes firmware restore.