Thanks to Apple's MobileMe for screwing my data again !

I need to find out where iTunes copies the older Contacts.db and Calendar.db on the Mac so that I can overwrite the existing ones using SSH. Because I dont want to restore all older settings...

When I right-click on the iPhone in iTunes and select Restore, the drop-down says - "Todays backup" and "Backup 20/7/08". So, where is the Contacts and Calendar backup files stored for the Backup - 20/7/08. Did not get it in the User -> Library.

Also, these are 1.1.4 backup files, so will they work with 2.0 ?

Backups has almost all user files and it's possible to manually recover them.

But it's not easy and I know of no program to help. The steps are:

1) Locate the backup files in your computer. It's located on a subdirectory (aka folder) named .....\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup

Under Windows Vista: C:\Users\<your userid>\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup

Under MacOS 10: /USers/<your userid>/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup

2) insdie the "backup" directory there should be a subdirectory for each backup entry stored in the computer.

3) The problem is the format of the files, that have a mdbackup extension and are binary plist file. One needs to manually inspect this files to perform 2 things:

- Open and read the file. Either convert it to a XML type plist file or use a binary plist editor (available on Leopard).

- Determine if the file is the one you are looking for (look at the value of the "Path" key).

4) The actual file contects is in the key "Data", and in base 64 encoded. You need to extract the data and decode it.

Not simple tasks and there is no immediate program to help here. Under MacOS one may write some macros (to extract file file name for example or to extract the data and convert).

Complex? Yes! Doable, oh yeah. I've done it a few times.

Thanks man! Just what I was looking for !

Its better to forget those contacts and add them manually from another txt backup I had made. However, I can backup these backup folders on a DVD for future restores. Thanks.

THUMBS UP FOR YOU !!!