I Should Have Known....Back Up Your iPad!

I received this email from a friend today:

"Just in case you haven't backed up your iPad or iPhone lately, here's my experience.

Last week my "contacts" inexplicably went kerflooey.  Suddenly, I had 692 contacts, most of them with first name only or last name only or email only.  It was a mess.  Since I was backing up to ICloud, each time I opened the next device or iTunes, those corrupted files exploded onto that platform.

Yesterday I spent about 3 hr. on the phone with an Apple Sr. Tech Advisor.  Eventually, we got to the dreaded point of having to do a Restore from backup.  I had assumed that restoring to the Cloud would work, but since my Cloud was corrupted, we had to go back to what I had backed up on my computer--9 months ago.  So after making my IPad look like it did last September, I spent another 8 hrs. or so getting everything back in order.

Bottom line, use the Cloud if you want, but manually back up to your computer once a month. Connect your device to your computer and open iTunes, click on the device icon, go to summary tab, choose back up to my computer.  I wish I had!"

So, for those of you who are also depending on iCloud, here is how you back up to your computer monthly:

1. Turn on your computer and open iTunes. Check to see that your iTunes is updated if you haven't done this in awhile....

2. Detach the AC Power from your power cord, plug the USB end in to your computer, and the other end into your iPad.

3. Make sure your iPad is on, and it should show up in the left side bar of iTunes (From iTunes menu, choose View, then Show Sidebar):

4. Click on your iPad in the sidebar and you will see some options. On the left in the main screen, you have the opportunity to manually do a back up to your computer.

5. Choose "Manually Back Up Now".

From this same screen, you can also choose to sync your iPad to this computer over wifi.
If you choose that option, you will not have to plug in again. It will back up to the computer when you are on the same wifi network (i.e. your home network) unless you change the settings back to iCloud. 

6. After you are sure you have done a back up to your computer, you can change your settings to back up over iCloud again.