How to back up your iphone

Well most of you will be back from holidays and either back at work or prepping to go back to work. Our lives will begin to get busier again and with that our bad habits will creep back in. 

I’m not sure if anyone made and New Year’s resolutions to get on top of and stay on top of your data on your devices? Many of us take it for granted having storage on our devices, whether it be your phone, tablet or computer. These devices will continue to work, but have you ever made a schedule to back up the data we expect them to store for us day in day out. 

Well 2020 is your year to get on top of it and set up a schedule to back up your data!!! 

So, to help some of you get on your way, here are some simple instructions to back up your iPhone to start with. 

iPhone backup 

Everyone with an iPhone will have a 5gb iCloud account as part of your apple account. You can opt to expand this storage at an extra charge by iCloud. Some of you don’t want to pay for this or even know that you have this available. It may have been setup automatically when you purchased your iPhone. Either way it is still a good idea to back up your iPhone external to your device and iCloud storage. This is through your iTunes account on your computer, to do this follow these steps: 

If you have an Apple Mac computer 

1. Plug your iPhone into your Apple computer 

2. Open iTunes, click “Allow” to trust this device on your computer 

3. Locate your iPhone from the list (only if you have multiples on your account) and select ‘General’ Tab 

4. Select the type of backup you wish to do and click on “Back Up Now” button 

1. If you select All data you will need to create an encryption password – make sure you store this somewhere safe as you will need this of access files when and if you need to restore from your backup. 

5. Leave your computer to complete the backup process and check the status  to make sure it worked.

If you have a Windows computer 
 

1. Plug your iPhone into your Windows computer you normally sync to 

2. Open iTunes on your computer and click on the mobile phone pic on the top left of the iTunes window 

3. Under ‘Settings’ click on Summary 

4. Now click “Back Up Now” – if you wish to encrypt your backup then select “Encrypt backup” type in password the click ‘Set Password’ – Remember to record this password somewhere safe as you will need this if you need to restore from this backup. 

5. Check to make sure your backup completed ok – you are done. 

These steps will also work with your iPod, iWatch and iPad. 

It is important that we get in the habit of backing up our data as we shouldn’t take it for granted it will just be there when we wake up every day. With iPhones in particular, if you forget your pin and lock yourself out then you run the risk of losing the data on that device to get it working again.