Having to factory reset your iPhone is frustrating and can be inconvenient. The good news is that there are multiple ways to recover our data after our iPhone has been factory reset and knowing how to restore your iPhone after a factory reset is a skill that will help you recover your data should you lose it.
The best practice is to make sure that you keep a backup of your iPhone as issues with software can happen and knowing how to handle them will make life easier.
How to Back Up Your iPhone to iCloud
Apple has tried to make backing up less of a chore with iCloud Backup. This iOS feature lets your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch back up its contents to the cloud. If you’re looking for the most frictionless way to back up your devices, this is it. The nice thing about iCloud Backup is that you set it and forget it.
iCloud Backup happens automatically when your device is charging, locked, and is connected to Wi-Fi. Once you’ve configured your device for iCloud Backup, you should just be able to rely on the backups to happen periodically when you’re charging.
Backup Your Device
An important reminder: before you factory reset your iPhone or iPad, make sure you’ve backed up anything you want to keep on the iCloud or iTunes. Apple devices are encrypted out of the box. This means erased files aren’t simply hidden and displayed as free space, they are completely removed – no software can revive deleted files.
Apple has support pages explaining the methods you can use to back up your iOS device, and these include via iCloud or via iTunes.
When Factory Restoring An iPhone
A factory restore, also called “hard reset,” “master reset,” and “factory reset,” is a built-in option in any electronic device that forcibly brings the device back to its original state.
On phones that have an external storage option, such as Android phones, factory restores will only wipe data that is saved to the internal storage. This means that all files, whether text or media, saved on the external storage, will remain safe.
Steps to iTunes backup
- Connect your iPhone to the computer and open iTunes.
- Select your iPhone in iTunes. Under Backups, click on Back Up Now.
After your iPhone is back to factory settings, you can restore all contacts, photos, videos, music, Safari history, WhatsApp, Line, Kik messages, etc., from the backup created in iCloud or iTunes.
