My iPhone backup strategy

[Kaido]

I recently updated my iPhone backup plan. iTunes never gets 100% of everything, especially when you backup & transfer it to a new phone you've just upgraded to. Plus I've gotten sick of the "you need to buy more iCloud storage" alert every night. I have a 2-pronged approach:

1. Amazon Prime subscription ($99 annually)
2. iMazing software ($30)

Amazon Prime recently added a new feature to the service called Cloud Drive, which lets you back up unlimited, full-resolution photos from your iOS device: (well, they added unlimited photos as a feature to Cloud Drive, which is part of Prime)

https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/primephotos

Prime is $99 a year (about $8.34 a month if you were to break the cost down). Apple's pricing is as follows:

http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT5879

5GB: Free
20GB: $0.99 a month
200GB: $3.99 a month
500GB: $9.99 a month
1TB: $19.99 a month

That makes Prime a good deal if you're planning on using the 500GB or 1TB iCloud plan specifically for photos, since you save money & get unlimited storage, plus a slew of other services like music, movies, and free 2-day shipping.

So that takes care of the photos bit, but there's a ton more stuff to backup. iCloud does an okay (but not great job) at backing up the extras, and you can still use it with the Photos backup turned off (disable Photo Stream), but I like having a complete dump of my phone available, which iTunes doesn't truly do in its "full" backup. Instead, I use iAmazing ($30, formerly called DiskAid):

http://imazing.com/

It can do a full backup, including a clone (like if you're upgrading to a newer iPhone), plus it can do full backups wirelessly. I use a Qi wireless case & charger on my iPhone 5S, so that's really handy. Plus it has all the extra features like copying your music from your phone into iTunes, doing file transfers, backing up individual apps (this is huge if you're into gaming & stuff - I've done transfers for people where it's lost the data even though it says the backup did "everything"). The only downside is that those full backups are manual, so you either have to plugged into your computer, have wireless backup turned on, or do wireless over say a VPN (hmm, I'll have to test that) if you want to do it remotely...but at least you get a 100% 1:1 copy of everything, and have Amazon backing up 100% of the photos. So the costs & work basically breaks down to:

1. A one-time $30 fee for a license of iMazing
2. An ongoing $99 annual fee for Prime (approximately $8.34 per month on average)
3. Manual full backups (can be done wirelessly, without the USB plug)
4. Automatic, unlimited photo backups

The main thing I care about are my photos. I try to do a full backup of the phone weekly, but sometimes it's monthly based on if I remember or not. Plus I still use iCloud for contacts & whatnot, just not photos anymore. This is the best disaster recovery plan I've been able to come up with given the currently available crop of software & services out there. At some point, it'd be cool if I could do full iMazing backups via wifi to the "cloud", whether that's to a computer or Dropbox or whatever, that way I couldn't even have to remember to do the full backup manually...

 

[avinyc]

I recently updated my iPhone backup plan. iTunes never gets 100% of everything, especially when you backup & transfer it to a new phone you've just upgraded to. Plus I've gotten sick of the "you need to buy more iCloud storage" alert every night. I have a 2-pronged approach:

1. Amazon Prime subscription ($99 annually)
2. iMazing software ($30)

Amazon Prime recently added a new feature to the service called Cloud Drive, which lets you back up unlimited, full-resolution photos from your iOS device: (well, they added unlimited photos as a feature to Cloud Drive, which is part of Prime)

https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/primephotos

Prime is $99 a year (about $8.34 a month if you were to break the cost down). Apple's pricing is as follows:

http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT5879

5GB: Free
20GB: $0.99 a month
200GB: $3.99 a month
500GB: $9.99 a month
1TB: $19.99 a month

That makes Prime a good deal if you're planning on using the 500GB or 1TB iCloud plan specifically for photos, since you save money & get unlimited storage, plus a slew of other services like music, movies, and free 2-day shipping.

So that takes care of the photos bit, but there's a ton more stuff to backup. iCloud does an okay (but not great job) at backing up the extras, and you can still use it with the Photos backup turned off (disable Photo Stream), but I like having a complete dump of my phone available, which iTunes doesn't truly do in its "full" backup. Instead, I use iAmazing ($30, formerly called DiskAid):

http://imazing.com/

It can do a full backup, including a clone (like if you're upgrading to a newer iPhone), plus it can do full backups wirelessly. I use a Qi wireless case & charger on my iPhone 5S, so that's really handy. Plus it has all the extra features like copying your music from your phone into iTunes, doing file transfers, backing up individual apps (this is huge if you're into gaming & stuff - I've done transfers for people where it's lost the data even though it says the backup did "everything"). The only downside is that those full backups are manual, so you either have to plugged into your computer, have wireless backup turned on, or do wireless over say a VPN (hmm, I'll have to test that) if you want to do it remotely...but at least you get a 100% 1:1 copy of everything, and have Amazon backing up 100% of the photos. So the costs & work basically breaks down to:

1. A one-time $30 fee for a license of iMazing
2. An ongoing $99 annual fee for Prime (approximately $8.34 per month on average)
3. Manual full backups (can be done wirelessly, without the USB plug)
4. Automatic, unlimited photo backups

The main thing I care about are my photos. I try to do a full backup of the phone weekly, but sometimes it's monthly based on if I remember or not. Plus I still use iCloud for contacts & whatnot, just not photos anymore. This is the best disaster recovery plan I've been able to come up with given the currently available crop of software & services out there. At some point, it'd be cool if I could do full iMazing backups via wifi to the "cloud", whether that's to a computer or Dropbox or whatever, that way I couldn't even have to remember to do the full backup manually...

I understand the amazon part for backing up photos, but I don't see why you need iMazing for the remainder. Couldn't you just backup with itunes and get the same results?

 

[SamQuint]

iMazing does some cool stuff.

You can convert your message threads into pdf files.
Or you can pull out all your messaged photos from imessage in one click

you can pull off all your voice mail or recorded voice notes individually.

Pretty much lets you find anything stored on your phone and back it up to your computer.

Well worth the price. Great tool for iPhones and iPads.

 

[Kaido]

I understand the amazon part for backing up photos, but I don't see why you need iMazing for the remainder. Couldn't you just backup with itunes and get the same results?

Sure, but iTunes doesn't really get 100% of your data, plus I've run into a variety of issues with the whole iOS/iCloud/iTunes backup/restore/upgrade system. I am super anal about backups, so my strategy is for people who want more control than what Apple gives you OOTB. I used my phone for both work & personal use, so it's super important for me to have a good backup in case my phone dies or gets broken & I have to replace it same-day. Plus I've run into a lot of situations where I just need more control than what iTunes offers me. Some examples: (note that iMazing does not require a jailbreak & works perfectly with stock phones)

1. I shoot a lot of video on my phone using Filmic Pro. iMazing lets me backup that individual app as an IPA, which I can then convert to a ZIP file & extract the data from, giving me a 1:1 backup of all of my footage. I keep a copy of the original on my archive server if I ever need the untouched data again. In iTunes, I can only transfer the video files from Filmic Pro in iTunes via the app transfer system.

2. I manage a lot of iPhones at work, as well as help friends out. One of the big requests is saving music files from the phone back to the computer. iMazing lets you do that. Plus it's not tied to anyone specific library, so you don't have to overwrite everything if you want to sync from your laptop's iTunes library instead of your desktop's iTunes library, which is cool.

3. I've had a sketchy experience with using iTunes to do a full backup of a phone, either if the phone is having problems & needs to be restored to factory, or if the user is upgrading to a new phone and wants ALL of the data transferred over. Plus, iCloud doesn't do a full backup, so you still have to do a manual backup in iTunes if you want a complete backup anyway, which is just as easy to do in iMazing as it is in iCloud. And you can do standalone, transferrable backups, which makes it easy to throw on a backup drive if you need to.

This sounds like an advertisement for iMazing, haha. I'm just happy to have a tool that does what I want it to do, plus has a lot of extra features, like being able to browse backups to grab specific files, or being able to copy games over to a new phone & have all of the progress saved.

 

[BarkingGhostar]

iMazing replaced Diskaid, which I use. I grab components, or everything, depending on what I want. For instance, voicemail so I can individually listen to them as needed. While iTune does backup, it does it as a monolithic item. I am not aware of how I can backup with iTunes and from within iTunes listen to individual voice mails.

 

[avinyc]

Sure, but iTunes doesn't really get 100% of your data, plus I've run into a variety of issues with the whole iOS/iCloud/iTunes backup/restore/upgrade system. I am super anal about backups, so my strategy is for people who want more control than what Apple gives you OOTB. I used my phone for both work & personal use, so it's super important for me to have a good backup in case my phone dies or gets broken & I have to replace it same-day. Plus I've run into a lot of situations where I just need more control than what iTunes offers me. Some examples: (note that iMazing does not require a jailbreak & works perfectly with stock phones)

1. I shoot a lot of video on my phone using Filmic Pro. iMazing lets me backup that individual app as an IPA, which I can then convert to a ZIP file & extract the data from, giving me a 1:1 backup of all of my footage. I keep a copy of the original on my archive server if I ever need the untouched data again. In iTunes, I can only transfer the video files from Filmic Pro in iTunes via the app transfer system.

2. I manage a lot of iPhones at work, as well as help friends out. One of the big requests is saving music files from the phone back to the computer. iMazing lets you do that. Plus it's not tied to anyone specific library, so you don't have to overwrite everything if you want to sync from your laptop's iTunes library instead of your desktop's iTunes library, which is cool.

3. I've had a sketchy experience with using iTunes to do a full backup of a phone, either if the phone is having problems & needs to be restored to factory, or if the user is upgrading to a new phone and wants ALL of the data transferred over. Plus, iCloud doesn't do a full backup, so you still have to do a manual backup in iTunes if you want a complete backup anyway, which is just as easy to do in iMazing as it is in iCloud. And you can do standalone, transferrable backups, which makes it easy to throw on a backup drive if you need to.

This sounds like an advertisement for iMazing, haha. I'm just happy to have a tool that does what I want it to do, plus has a lot of extra features, like being able to browse backups to grab specific files, or being able to copy games over to a new phone & have all of the progress saved.

Advertising or not, you piqued my interest. I will look into this software as I really never liked being trapped by itunes.