how to recover my contacts and photos from an iphone 4 incomplete backup

September 19, 2013 7:45 PM

bullet points: - i recently had to get an i phone 5 for work at a new job. - i backed up the previous iphone 4 to i cloud. - when i re-entered i cloud, it said the backup is incomplete. - i thought i had changed my apple id username, but i have only been able to use the old id so obviously i must have done it incorrectly - i cannot sync my old contacts and photos to my new i phone. - i assume all the contacts are on the old sim, but it doesnt fit a 5. - i probably dont have access to the old handset. - i might be able to use my girlfriends handset, but not reset it. - i want the photos and contacts. i am starting to really hate apple. how do i do it - is there a way or have i lost all my contacts?
posted by edtut to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)

Nothing is stored on the SIM in iPhones, it's all on the phone itself. That's why you need to back it up to your computer or to iCloud.

It didn't back up properly (which it told you) so it's no wonder that the contacts and numbers are not coming across. But putting the SIM into another phone will not help, they are not stored there.

Sorry. Without the old phone I'm not sure there is a way to get this data back.
posted by Youremyworld at 7:57 PM on September 19, 2013

Response by poster: thanks
i left the old job in a hurry and didnt have time to do any more with the backup,
and as i understand it the cloud only syncs fwd,
so i need to do a restore from old backup to get the contacts in any case.

but yeh it wont do it if the backup is corrupted,
thats the problem
posted by edtut at 8:27 PM on September 19, 2013

As youremyworld said, there's no useful saved data on your SIM card. You need to either get the old handset, or an old backup of the handset.

Is getting access to the old handset (even for a few minutes) out of the question? Can you call someone and ask nicely? (I'm guessing no.)

If your latest iCloud backup is corrupted (incomplete), do you have access to the earlier backups? Did you ever connect this phone to a computer via iTunes? If so, it has backups squirreled away in obscure folders. Apple discussion thread says:
* Mac: ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/
* Windows XP: \Documents and Settings\(username)\Application Data\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup\

If you switched to iCloud backups, those folders might not be there. But: was that computer ever backed up during the time you were syncing to it? By Time Machine, for example? If so, you might have a backup of the backup, so to speak.
posted by RedOrGreen at 11:19 AM on September 20, 2013