I recently made a full backup of my iPhone 4S to my computer. I was having some issues with it, so I went into DFU mode and did a clean install.
Unfortunately as soon as iTunes finished installing iOS 6, it automatically made a full back-up of my phone, and I now can't see the previous back-up I made. Please tell me it's still there!
How may I recover a previous back-up?
Best Answer
[I realize this is an older question and may not solve the problem for the OP, but this answer is intended to provide guidance to others.]
If you use iTunes backups, there is only one backup (the latest) maintained per device at any point in time. So in this case the new backup overwrote the older backup, and it would be possible to recover only if a copy of
~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/
was made before the clean install (through Time Machine or any other solution), restoring that folder on the system and doing a restore from iTunes.You can see the device backups (with the timestamps) available in iTunes by going to iTunes → Preferences and then navigating to the Devices tab.
Some recommendations and points to note to avoid such a situation and have something to fall back to:
See: Choosing an iOS backup method (Should I use iTunes or iCloud to back up my iOS device?)