Jailbroken on 4.3.2

I use bitesms for texting, but for some reason, my springboard restarted on it's own, and ALL MY TEXTS are GONE. I did a backup two weeks ago, and only want to restore my texts. I have current pictures and voicememos that I don't want to get overwritten if I do a restore from backup, as won't that overwrite all the new pics and videos I took in the past 3 weeks?

If that's the case, how can I just restore the text message convo's only from the backup.

Use iPhone backup extractor to extract your SMS.db from the backup you made, and use iPhoneBrowser or DiskAid to copy it back to the iPhone. Reboot the device and you'll have your SMS history as of the backup.

It will not modify any other data on the device.

Awesome!!! It worked! Thanks so much! You would think apple would give you the choice in itunes to just restore certain things only, but I guess not. Sweet!

Also, is it normal after some time to lose the pictures inside the text message convo's? Some of mine have turned blank over time. Just wondering why that happens.

Glad to hear this worked for you.

With regard to pictures being removed from conversations -- I can't say that I've had that happen. I don't text as much as some other people do, I only have something like 15,000 text messages in my database after keeping it for the last 3-4 years, so it may be related to the hard limit of 15MB that Apple has implemented in iOS 5 on the SMS database that I wouldn't have experienced yet. You would need something like 75,000 text messages in the database in order for it to approach that 15MB limit, but if you think you may be near, it's possible. You can also just check the filesize of the SMS.db you copied back -- if it's near 15MB, that could be your culprit. IF not, it could be that the SMS.db uses internal identifiers to refer to the pictures, and if the photo library has changed and the database isn't updated, it may be referencing files that don't exist in the same place or metadata that it can't find...

Ahh, Yea, it's 15mb in size. Hmm, interesting thoughts. Something got broken. It's not all convo's, just some. Sounds like something that isn't going to get fixed.

I'm not on ios5 yet. I'm on 4.3.2 pn my iphone 4. I haven't updated to ios5 as I didn't think there was a tethered jaillbreak yet?

There is a tethered for 5.0/5.0.1, as well as a semi-tethered. No untether, though.

If you just need one, you can copy it and email to yourself.
Otherwise need some unapproved 3rd party software to read them from your backup file.

Originally Posted by Jackie1

Jailbroken on 4.3.2

I use bitesms for texting, but for some reason, my springboard restarted on it's own, and ALL MY TEXTS are GONE. I did a backup two weeks ago, and only want to restore my iPhone texts. I have current pictures and voicememos that I don't want to get overwritten if I do a restore from backup, as won't that overwrite all the new pics and videos I took in the past 3 weeks?

If that's the case, how can I just restore the text message convo's only from the backup.

How to Restore Only SMS Text Messages to iPhone with iTunes
Optional: If you still haven’t created a latest backup on iTunes, connect iPhone to computer to perform a sync.
Open Windows Explorer in Windows (or Finder in Mac) and navigate to the following folder:
Windows: %UserProfile%\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup
Mac OS X: ~/Libary/Applications Support/MobileSync/Backup

There will be one or more than one sub-folders with random HEX characters as name, where each of them represents one backup stored by iTunes. By sorting by date or looking at the last modified date of the folders, note down the folder (origin folder) which is the latest backup created.

You can also select any previous backup which you want to restore SMS which was sent and received up to that point of time.

Originally Posted by sunmykim

How to Restore Only SMS Text Messages to iPhone with iTunes
Optional: If you still haven’t created a latest backup on iTunes, connect iPhone to computer to perform a sync.
Open Windows Explorer in Windows (or Finder in Mac) and navigate to the following folder:
Windows: %UserProfile%\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup
Mac OS X: ~/Libary/Applications Support/MobileSync/Backup

There will be one or more than one sub-folders with random HEX characters as name, where each of them represents one backup stored by iTunes. By sorting by date or looking at the last modified date of the folders, note down the folder (origin folder) which is the latest backup created.

You can also select any previous backup which you want to restore SMS which was sent and received up to that point of time.

If you just need one, you can copy it and email to yourself.