Taking backups of data is one of the unsaid rules of the digital world. Make it a habit to always take backup whether it is smartphone, tablet, PC or a laptop! Your precious personal data can be lost in a second if your iPhone crashes. Better be prepared with periodical backups than regret once it is all gone.
Thankfully, iPhone lets you back up phone data to your iCloud account or any hard drive. By following any of these two methods, you can successfully take a backup of all your contacts and other data so that in case anything went wrong, you could re-store the data.
Here is what you have to do to take a backup to your iCloud account:
If you have enabled auto back up in iCloud, it will backup all personal and app data in your iPhone when you connect your phone to a Wi-Fi network.
Personal data will include all your contacts, images, documents, settings, maps and so on that you must have saved into your iPhone memory.
As far as apps are concerned, they don’t really backup the apps, instead creates a record of all that you have purchased from App Store, iBooks, iTunes, etc.
It is pretty easy to create a backup in your iCloud. To take a backup right away, go to settings and open iCloud where you will see a “Backup” option.
Switch on the backup toggle and enter the password when the prompt appears. The screen that follows will give options of all data that can be backed up to the cloud like contacts, photos, documents, maps, settings, etc.
By default all choices will be selected, however, you can unselect any of them if you do not want them to be backed up. Now, your iPhone backup is created. If you have large chunks of data stored on your phone it will take a little while for the backup to complete.
Taking iPhone backup to a hard drive:
In case you want a backup of your data and apps in your system or a hard drive, this is what you have to do:
Plug in your phone to your computer and when the iTunes app will pop up. Ideally it should open automatically; in case if it doesn’t you may have to open it manually. Once the app is open, hover over the iPhone panel and click the icon on the toolbar that looks like an iPhone.
You will see a backup section under which you will have buttons for “Back up Now” and “Restore Backup”. Beneath the buttons will be displayed the last time when the backup was taken.
On the left you will also see options to create the backup onto your iCloud account or the computer you are using.
Before the backup commences, if you have any app or services on your iPhone that is not in your system, iTunes will prompt if you want to create a backup of such items.
Once you click your choice, the backup will begin. Similar to iCloud, the time taken for the backup depends on the amount of data you have in your iPhone.
No matter how much data you have, it is better to take backups on a regular basis if you don’t want to feel stranded in the middle of nowhere when your iPhone crashes (which we hope, never happens!)
