ZeroLogic explains how to turn off the long, long iPhone back-up process that starts up every time you connect the iPhone to your computer to sync. Obviously, this cancels all your future back-ups so you’re basically dead in the water if you fry your iPhone but it does save a good few minutes every time you plug in your iPhone. The choice, reader, is yours.
This command will change a hidden setting in the iTunes preferences that will force it to skip the backup process.
1. – Quit iTunes.
2. – Open Terminal.app
3. – Copy and paste this in, then hit return:
defaults write com.apple.iTunes DeviceBackupsDisabled -bool true4. – Open iTunes
5. – Plug in your iPhone (2.0 or 3G) and sync.It will take a few seconds, assuming you don’t have a ton of music or podcasts.
Changing the ‘true’ in step 3 to ‘false’ will re-enable the backup feature.
[via Giz]
Why would you be dead in the water without an iPhone backup? If you fry your phone, the phone is dead regardless of whether or not you backed it up. The only things lost would be content you purchased ON the phone or info you entered since your last sync. Of course, if MobileMe is working, the data (phone, calendar, photos, etc.) might be backed up already. And purchases can be easily downloaded in iTunes – it may require a call to Apple.
The iPhone by it’s integration with MobileMe and iTunes doesn’t seem to be in dire need of backing up.
Please, am I missing something?
I agree with you Tom, 100%. I just disabled my back up for the iPhone. I still wonder what does the backup actually back up. In my experience if my phone is crashing a lot I do a restore and the restore does not grab my back up, it actually grab everything that I sync from my computer with a fresh version of the iPhone firmware.
Hopefully I’m correct, forgive me if I’m not.
Actually, some things would be missing, but their importance may be negligible to you. You would not get back your saved SMS messages, Camera Roll photos, Springboard icon locations, Web app icons, and many other preferences you’ve set on your iPhone.
Yes, but if you do a backup ONCE only and THEN disable it, wont it revert it to that back up? That’s why I see it’s pointless to back up EVERY time, like once a month or something. We should have more control over this. Btw, any one know how to reproduce this on windows?
I have written a small FREE Windows program called “iPhone Backup Switch”. The program will allow you to enable and disable the iPhone backup feature in iTunes. I have tested it pretty well in Windows XP and VISTA. There is a backup feature that will backup the iTunes configuration and let you restore a previous version, if something goes wrong. Comes complete with installer and uninstaller.
Get it here:
http://www.microseconds.com/backupswitch.html
Spread the word please!