Can I move an ipad backup?

Q A long story short: I broke my ipad, but my most recent backup is on a Windows PC at my brother’s house – in America! I’ll be back there at Christmas but I’m wondering if there’s a way to get the backup from itunes on his PC to the PC at my house here in Blighty? I spoke to Apple and they said the ipad would need to be connected to the itunes that holds the backup, which isn’t much help to me. The only backup I have here at home on my computer is nearly a year old and, while I suppose it’ll do if I have no choice, I really want to get my hands on the backup I made in the US this past Christmas. Is there any way to make this happen? Matthew Fisher A Apple’s not wrong, but we guess it didn’t explain that itunes’ backup folders can be transported between computers. First, instruct your brother to press Windows key+e to launch File Explorer, then ask him to navigate to C:\users\[username]\appdata\ Roaming\apple Computer\

Mobilesync\backup, where Username is the username of the Windows account used to backup your ipad. Here, he’ll see one or more folders with cryptic names. One of these is your backup. We can’t say which, but check the date for a clue. Have him right-click this folder, point to ‘Send to’, then click ‘Compressed (zipped) folder’ (see screenshot above). Your brother now needs to get this file to you. It’ll almost certainly be too big to email, but there are many online-storage services that can help. If he has Onedrive set up on his PC, for example, he could transfer the

ZIP file into his Onedrive folder and then generate a sharing link that you can click to download. First, he should right-click the ZIP file and choose ‘Share a Onedrive link’ (see screenshot left), to copy the link to the Windows Clipboard. Then, he just needs to send you that link in an email, pressing Control (Ctrl)+v to paste it into the message body.

If he doesn’t have Onedrive or similar then a free file-transfer service such as We Transfer ( www.wetransfer. com) will do the job. Tell your brother to click ‘Take me to Free’ followed by ‘I agree’, then tap in your email address. Next, he should click ‘Add your files’, select the ZIP file just created and then click Transfer. When the file has finished uploading, you’ll receive an email with the relevant download link.

At your end, first make sure itunes is not running (or close it if it is). Next, press Windows key+e to launch Windows Explorer and then navigate to C:\users\[username]\appdata\ Roaming\apple Computer\mobile Sync\backup. Copy the downloaded ZIP file to this folder, then right-click it and choose Extract All.

Wait for the process to complete and then launch itunes. Click Edit followed by Preferences, and then Devices. If all has gone to plan, your up-to-date backup will take pride of place at the top of the list, under ‘Device backups’. You can now attach a new ipad and proceed with the restore process as normal.