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August 19, 2008

Stop iPhone Backups

If you've updated your iPhone to system 2, you've been wasting lots of time playing games on your iPhone and, unfortunately, wasting even more time waiting for your iPhone to "backup" each time you sync. We don't know what this is all about, but it stinks. This backup starts off every sync and is so slow that syncing has become a real pain in the ass.

Yes, we know you can wait for the backup to start and then click the little "X" to cancel the backup, but, what we didn't know until recently, was that when you click that little "X" and stop the backup, your are actually corrupting the backup file. Which means, if you restore your iPhone from that backup, your iPhone will have mucho problemos.

So, we did some digging and figured out how to tell iTunes to STOP backing up your iPhone. Remember, backing up is different than syncing--backing up only saves your favorites, your preference settings and the current state of your applications (like your notes and your high-scores...) Well, we don't think this stuff is all that important, and we certainly don't think it's worth waiting four or five hours to back up (that's how long it's taking for our iPhones to complete this part of the sync.) So we turned "backup" off and haven't looked back since.

To turn it off, you have to go into the terminal and type 1 command. We know a lot of your are saying, but I don't like to type things into the terminal, I'm worried it's gonna screw up my computer. Well, you're right, it can screw up your computer, but so can a lot of things. In this case, we think the benefit far outweighs the downside, so grow some stones and cut and paste one line into the terminal.

Here's the nitty-gritty:

QUIT itunes.
Open the terminal (Applications--->Utilities--->Terminal)
cut and past this exact line of text into the terminal:

defaults write com.apple.itunes DeviceBackupsDisabled -bool YES

push "return" and quit the terminal.

When you next sync, iTunes will not back up your iPhone.

If you want iTunes to return to backing up your iPhone, QUIT iTunes and type the same line into the terminal, except, change the YES to NO. In this manner you can go to and from backing up at your convenience.

We think it's a good idea to have 1 backup of your iPhone, and then turn this feature off. That way you will have a backup in an emergency (although in most iPhone emergencies it is recommended that you not restore your iPhone from a backup, so we're not sure it's worth even keeping one.) Either way, the choice is yours.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The applications..>utilities..>terminal.... is that for an apple computer? How would one go about doing the same thing on a WinXP pc?