How to recover older iTunes backups for iPhone?

Question

I have an iPhone 5. I made a backup copy last week with my iTunes. I discovered that I had erased some notes so I wanted to restore the backup from iTunes. When I plugged the phone to the PC, iTunes asked me to update the iOS software in order to proceed with the restore process. I did the update but also a new backup over the old one was made.

When I look for the backups available to restore it only shows the one from yesterday but not the one from last week. Is it possible to recover older backups from iTunes even if they have been overwritten by the latest backups?

Answer 1

iTunes uses an incremental process to save the iPhone backup, If you're lucky enough you can check the directory %AppData%\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup (Windows 7) to see if your old backup is there (check the dates on the files). If you find any, you can move the newest one to another location and try another restore from iTunes.

Answer 2

It's not possible since iTunes replace the latest backup when it creates a new one.

Take a look at apple documentation to see where backup are located on your computer. If you have made a backup of your hard drive before the 'yesterday' save was created you should be able to retrieve your old backup.

What you should have done instead of update :

1. Say no to update (or download the update then install later)
2. Restore from itunes
3. Once the iPhone is restored, choose configure as a new iPhone, in order to not override the save you want to use with a freshly created one)
4. Restore your iPhone from your old save (ie the 'yesterday' save)

One ultimate solution to your problem :

Notes on iPhone are related to an account by default icloud is used, if you have change this setup, take a look at the account you have setup. For example if your notes are save on google you can find notes inside gmail in a folder (maybe called notes). You may be able from this account to retrieve your deleted notes.