How to Restore SMS History from Previous iPhone to New iPhone

Restore SMS History from iPhone 3G to iPhone 3GS

17 August 2009 by Vinay 10 Comments

Wow i just purchased a new shiny iPhone 3GS, i synced my Contacts, Notes, Calendar, Music, Photos and Videos but how can i transfer my lots of SMS saved in my previous iPhone 3G? Ok if you jailbreaked your phone than it’s damn easy just SSH your iPhone 3G and Navigate to /private/var/mobile/Library/SMS and Save sms.db on your computer then follow the vice versa with iPhone 3GS just copy sms.db from your computer to iPhone 3GS /private/var/mobile/Library/SMS folder. For more details check our previously published guide here Backup iPhone Contacts, SMS, Notes & Call History. But what if you never jailbreaked your iPhone or you are not interested in jailbreaking your new iPhone.

Here is the simple to follow procedure to Restore SMS History from Previous iPhone to New iPhone. All you have to do is to copy SMS backup files from old iPhone back up folder to new iPhone back up folder.

Navigate to the iTunes backup folder

Windows User : C >> Users >> User Name >> AppData >> Roaming >> Apple >> Computer >> MobileSync >> Backup >>
Mac OS X User : ~/Libary » Applications Support » MobileSync » Backup.

In the backup folder there will be X number of folders according to number of phones you synced to your iTunes. For example i have two iPhone 2G and 3G so i have two folders named with 40 random hex characters. But i need to copy SMS from iPhone 3G so how do i identify?
To identify your particular iPhone backup sync both phones with 5 minutes of interval and note the time in your computer clock while syncing.
Now Sort the view by date–this will let you easily tell which subfolder belongs to which phone.
- Now you knows the folder where your previous iPhone 3G backup is saved, so explore to that particular folder (iPhone 3G) and copy these two files to iPhone 3GS folder. Make sure you must synced new iPhone 3GS at least once so back up folder will be created.
  3d0d7e5fb2ce288813306e4d4636395e047a3d28.mddata 3d0d7e5fb2ce288813306e4d4636395e047a3d28.mdinfo
Connect your new iPhone 3GS to the computer and launch the iTunes.
When your iPhone appears under Devices in your iTunes sidebar, Control-click it and select the ‘Restore from Backup…’ option.
Select the backup related to your device i mean iPhone 3GS.

This is the first time we published such a hack for non jailbreaked iPhone, so please post your response in comments section below. We are waiting to hear from you.

10 Comments »

Fird said:

Thanks! This is handy as I don’t plan to jailbreak my phone just yet!

# 27 August 2009 at 9:08 pm

nummy said:

this helped great. thanks! this allowed me to do a fresh full restoration and back up my SMS.

# 12 September 2009 at 6:23 am

dulita said:

This doesn’t work!! I just tried it and it seems to have no effect at all though I’ve replaced both SMS files with the ones from older backup.

Any idea why?

# 16 September 2009 at 3:13 pm

Anil said:

This is simply fantastic…

All of my data got transferred instantly..

Thanks for this great technique.

Regrds, Anil

# 23 January 2010 at 10:09 am

mark said:

can we also do this with Contacts, Notes and Photos?

# 26 January 2010 at 5:08 pm

mekkano said:

I only want to transfer the sms messages. it’s not clear if this procedure replaces only sms or all data (address book, calendar, etc) from the older iphone onto the new iPhone. Could you clarify this please?

# 26 January 2010 at 11:32 pm

nic said:

ITS NOT WORKING…. TRIED 10000000 TIMES!!!!

# 24 February 2010 at 12:14 am

Aneesh said:

tried to copy sms messages from my old 3gs to new 3gs. didnt work. please help

# 20 March 2010 at 5:43 am

Macdots said:

1. Copy the two files as described (3d0d7e5f…) from the ‘source’ backup to a temporary directory. In addition also copy the three files:
a) Info.plist
b) Manifest.plist
c) Status.plist

For information :

for sms: locate the file named 3d0d7e5fb2ce288813306e4d4636395e047a3d28.mddata or .mdbackup on your computer.

for address book contacts: the file’s name is 31bb7ba8914766d4ba40d6dfb6113c8b614be442.mddata or .mdbackup

# 12 April 2010 at 4:01 pm