Where are iPhone Backups Stored Windows and Mac|iPhone backup location

‘Where are iPhone backups stored on Windows and Mac' in a computer is a frequently asked questions by the iPhone users, frantically searching for iPhone backup location to recover their rare and important data lost from their iPhones in unforeseen circumstances. My advice to every one of them in such situation is not to panic as iPhone is probably the easiest computing device from data backup point of view. An individual has no role to play in creating such data backups as these data are automatically backed up by iTunes onto a Windows or Mac system prior to an upgrade of the device or during its synchronization.Each time the user connects his iPhone to the computer to synchronize with iTunes, iTunes takes a backup of the iPhone first and then moves on to perform the synchronizing tasks. But the real problem lies elsewhere. Apple has tried it’s best to hide from the user’s view the location where iPhone backups are stored on Windows or Mac in a PC . A user, therefore, faces difficulty in finding the iPhone backup location in his attempt to restore his iPhone with all backups in case of loss of rare and essential data for any reason. Apple has developed the device such that In general the users can rely on iTunes to handle all their iPhone recovery and backup needs. Nevertheless, you may, for various reasons, say for freeing your iPhone from the limitations imposed on it by the manufacturers or in case of losing your precious iPhone data doing an upgrade or becoming victim of some virus attack, sometimes need to keep your own backup copies for use during emergencies. In such cases it is quite natural for you to wonder where are iPhone backups stored in your PC in order to find the exact iPhone backup location so as to get access to the backup files in case of emergency.

Now coming to the answer to question- where are iPhone backups stored on Windows and Mac in a pc, it needs to be mentioned that the backup process is essentially the same for both the Operating System. However, iPhone backup locations where iTunes backs up all your iPhone files in specific folders depends on the Operating System as mentioned below:

For Mac OS X

~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/

(Where symbol ‘~’ signifies your home folder)

For Windows XP

C:\Documents and Settings\user\Application Data\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup

For Windows Vista and Windows 7

C:\Users\user\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup

Note (For Windows): The Application Data and AppData folders are hidden folders. In order to see the backup files in the folders in the iPhone backup location you will have to enable ‘Show hidden files’ option within the 'Windows Explorer'.

Therefore, if you ever need to have a look at the backup files yourself, go to the folders where iPhone backups are stored as mentioned above depending on your operating system, and copy the files to a convenient location easier to remember by you.

In case you are looking for an alternative way to access your iPhone files in the iPhone backup location through some backup tools available in the market instead of through the ‘Finder’ or ‘Windows Explorer’, you can try some of the programs out there. But many of them are found to be not up to the mark as per my experience goes. Nevertheless, I can suggest a very good software, ‘iPhone Backup Extractor’ which I found extremely useful for solving data loss problems. Apart from transferring iPhone data to the computer you can also transfer iPhone data to iTunes and can make back up of your iPhone files with the help of this application. You don’t need to have any technical knowledge to use this software to restore your iPhone data, be it songs, videos, pictures, documents, files or folders or anything else in case they are accidentally deleted or corrupted or incorrectly restored.

Conclusion

Now that you know the locations where are iPhone backups stored (Windows and Mac ), here is a word of caution for every user. Unless you have knowledge of what you are doing you should not edit any of the iPhone backup files. Wrong editing or deleting any of these files could cause irreversible problems and malfunctioning of your iPhone.