When I back my iPhone up to iTunes where is my information kept?

Question

When I back up my iPhone (5) to iTunes. Where is my information kept?

Answer 1

If you backup your iOS device to your iCloud account, all of the data is stored there.

But if you are looking for backups stored to your local machine, those would be stored in your user’s ~/Library/ path over here:

~/Library/Application\ Support/MobileSync/Backup

That directory should contain at least 1 or 2 directories with odd-looking hashes for names. Those are your backups.

If you can’t see that path in the “Finder” then you have two things you can do to navigate to that directory. One is to open up a “Terminal” window and run this command which would open up a “Finder” window for that directory:

open ~/Library/Application\ Support/MobileSync/Backup

Or you can do this in the “Finder” itself by opening up a window in the “Finder” for your user’s home directory. Then go to the “View > Show View Options” in the “Finder” and make sure “Show Library Folder” at the bottom of the list of options is checked; see attached picture. Do that and your “~/Library/” directory should be visible and you can navigate to the iOS backup sub-directory via the “Finder” quickly and easily.

Answer 2

If you backup to iTunes then the data is stored on your machine. If you backup to iCloud then it's stored in the cloud.

http://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT203977

http://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT4946 (Information on specific locations depending on your OS.)