Basically, the thing to realise with the backups (either local or remote) is that they only contain references to your media, but not the media itself. Restoring a backup just means reinstating the sync preferences, and copying over the media that was there when the backup was made. You need to have the media, itself, in your library. Your backup provides any preferences you’ve set.
Local backups have the edge over remote ones. For one, and most obvious, they’re encrypted with a key you choose. Because they’re encrypted, they contain more stuff, like a copy of your keychain (with all your passwords). They’re much faster. They can refer to media that’s no longer in the store. Because it’s using iTunes, media can be from outside the store as well. You can use both. If you turn on iCloud backup, you can still ask iTunes to make a local backup. It’s in the File,Devices menu, or you can use the “Back Up Now” button in the settings for your device in iTunes. I only use local backups, and only for rescue situations. Data on my devices is disposable. If it’s not visible in Finder on OS X, it isn’t worth keeping for me. I’ve heard of too many disasters caused by incompatible restorations gone bad. There are tools to explore backups, but at best I’d say they were a safety net and that you should never lose sight of your data in actual files. -- The following information is important for all members of the Mac Visionaries list. If you have any questions or concerns about the running of this list, or if you feel that a member's post is inappropriate, please contact the owners or moderators directly rather than posting on the list itself. Your Mac Visionaries list moderator is Mark Taylor and your owner is Cara Quinn - you can reach Cara at caraqu...@caraquinn.com The archives for this list can be searched at: http://www.mail-archive.com/macvisionaries@googlegroups.com/ --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
