iOS Hardware Change without loosing data or get duplicates

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KingTutt
Posts: 14
Joined: Tue Jul 20, 2010 11:31 am

iOS Hardware Change without loosing data or get duplicates

Post by KingTutt »

Hello Birdy,

what is the intended process of migrating calender and contacts from old Apple hardware to new (e.g. switching a broken iPhone to a new one) without loosing data or getting duplicates?

The first trivial thing is making a backup on both sides (Thunderbird and iPhone) that not the interesting point. The obvious procedure would be:
1) making a full sync between iPhone and Thunderbird (all informations which could be mapped are available on both sides now)
2) making a backup of Thunderbird Profile as pointed out in BirdySync FAQ and performing a backup using iTunes for iPhone
3) taking new iPhone and restore previous backup

At this point everything should be fine and process could be finished but the next sync process between new iPhone hardware and Thunderbird is the crucial point.
BirdieSync will recognize that hardware has changed and you have got two options at next synchronisation:
1) RESET contact synchronization in BirdieSync Activation tab, which leads to loosing additional data stored on iPhone (which are not synced to Thunderbird before in detail all unmapped contact fields) when selecting "Replace" at next sync
2) same as 1) but taking the option "Combine" or (which leads in my opinion to the same result) doing no RESET. Doing no RESET BirdySync will recognize all data on the iPhone as new (I don't know why, but probably because the hardware was changed) and start syncing them to Thunderbird, although this is not necessary (nothing has really changed). In my case that leads to messing up the Thunderbird side (e.g. loosing categories of events, because they unmapped). The "Combine" option after a RESET seems to be a process of "copy all from Thunderbird to iPhone and everything from iPhone to THunderbird and after that remove the duplicates (which looks fine at first). But which of the duplicates can safely be removed? Here it would be necessary to remove the iPhone once on Thunderbird side and the Thunderbird once on iPhone side in order to get the original state back. But when I tried that option I get messed up data on both sides...

So my question here is: What is the intended process of changing Apple hardware (could be iPhone or iPad as well) in order to not get messed up data or even loose of data?
An other question is: Is there a kind of preview option where the user can see why an event or contact should be synced again? This would be a kind of "diff" where the changed details could be seen and if needed the sync process could be interrupted before something bad would happen.

Kind regards
KingTutt

KingTutt
Posts: 14
Joined: Tue Jul 20, 2010 11:31 am

Re: iOS Hardware Change without loosing data or get duplicat

Post by KingTutt »

OK, here comes one possible solution. Obviously Apple changes something in iOS 7 so that the obvious procedure works fine! :D
In short:

Use Step 1,2,3 from posting above do _not_ a RESET in BirdieSync options. Just connect the newly recovered iPhone to BirdySync and press sync button. This time no full resync was needed and I got no duplicates. Thank you Birdy for your good work.

Never the less would it be possible to get a kind of previev option as mentioned before?

Kind regards
KingTutt

Birdy
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Posts: 3118
Joined: Tue Apr 18, 2006 11:43 am
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Re: iOS Hardware Change without loosing data or get duplicat

Post by Birdy »

Hello KingTutt,

Actually BirdieSync doesn't rely on the iPhone id to identify the device but relies on its own id. This id must have been kept when you backuped your iPhone and restored it later on your new hardware. So it was possible to resume synchronization without a reset. :)
But it also relies on the assumption that contact ids and data were not modified during the restore. I guess it's usually the case (the database file is restored as a whole) but it cannot be considered as a 100% guarantee...
In any case, it always recommended to keep a backup of your mobile device and of your Thunderbird profile before doing any reinstallation.

Regarding the preview, a first step would be to simply show which items are synchronized. But I agree it could also be interesting to show which fields were modified which would lead to a synchronization of the items.
Birdy

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