iTunes will not backup all neccessary files. And even if it did backup your specific file, it is not that easy to get the specic file out of an iTunes backup. (I will give you a post how to extract files from iTunes backup files tomorrow.)

So my advice is to copy all files from your iPhone to your computer. Its quite simple!

You need a backup directory on your computer, i used “iPhone-Backup” in my home directory for this example.

(1) Make sure your computer and your iPhone are connected to the same WiFi network and you know the bonjour name or the IP-address of your iPhone.

(2) Make sure the iPhone auto-lock is set to off: Go to the iPhone “Settings”: Then to “General”, then “Auto-Lock” and choose “Never”. You can change this after backup but now you want to make sure the WiFi connection stays on while the backup runs.

(3) Open the Terminal.app on your computer

(4) Make sure you got the backup directory in your home folder already set up. If not, just type: mkdir ~/iPhone-Backup

(5) For the backup (and for all subsequent backups later) type in: rsync --exclude private/var/mobile/Media/iTunes_Control/ -av root@(your-iPhone-IP):/ ~/iPhone-Backup/ --delete

So if your iPhone address is 10.0.1.3 the command would look like this: rsync --exclude private/var/mobile/Media/iTunes_Control/ -av root@10.0.1.3:/ ~/iPhone-Backup/ --delete

Now you got to wait a little. An iPhone running on firmware 2.x will probably take a few minutes for the first backup. Without applications the copy folder should be about 600 MB.

What does the command actually do?

(a) rsync will copy files via SSH from the SSH-server account root folder (root@10.0.1.3:/) to the local folder (~/iPhone-Backup/) that are not already copied. So the first backup will take quite a long time, all next backups will only copy new or changed files.

(b) the copy will exclude all files in your iPhones “iTunes Media” folder. (actually all files starting with private/var/mobile/Media/iTunes_Control/) This is neccessary since all your synced music and fotos from iTunes are stored here. Otherwise you would get a backup of all this data already stored in your iTunes!

(c) The “--delete” tag at the end makes sure all files already backup up and not on the iPhone anymore will be deleted with the next backup. So if you delete e.g. some camera pictures on your iPhone, the backup pictures on your computer will be deleted as well with the next backup.

(d) The “-av” tag specifies the backup mode: Archiving (a) and verbose (v). In verbose mode you get a long list of files that were backup up. There will be some files that cannot be backed up: Some of them are only links to devices on the phone. And some are part of running processes on the iPhone, e.g. your temporary mail file. Do not worry too much about them. You could change “-av” to “-a” and avoid the long list at all after your backup is set up correctly.

A little correction:

The Photo database will be copied: It is in ~/Media/Photos/ So the correct syntax for not copying the photo database would be: rsync --exclude private/var/mobile/Media/Photos/ --exclude private/var/mobile/Media/iTunes_Control/ -av root@10.0.1.3:/ ~/iPhone-Backup/ --delete

Hint: You can exclude any other folders – as long as you add an --exclude before any of them. Listing them after the --exclude command (space or comma separated) will not work!