what you need to know about iphone backup and theft deterrence

about "find my" iphone:

ICLOUD needs to be on for "find my" to be on. 

if your iphone is LOST, go to any pc, log in to icloud.com and mark your iphone as "lost" in "find my". nobody can turn off "find my", erase, or re-install the iphone without your PASSWORD. so your iphone will be useless to anyone without your password. you can make your iphone display a message offering a reward and your contact info when it connects to the internet. you can make the iphone play a sound in case it's just misplaced. 

it is common to have MULTIPLE icloud accounts. if you can't see your iphone listed in "find my", try logging in to your other icloud accounts.

example, i used to have 2 icloud accounts - 1 for my main phone and another for my vlogging (camera) phones. my reason was a NOTEPAD with the same name in my vlogging phone used to overwrite the one in my main phone. but apple already fixed this. now, if i create a notepad with the same name in my vlogging phone, there will simply be 2 notepads having the same name in icloud and all my phones after the autosync.

about iphone to pc backup

you can MANAGE (view and delete) all your iphone backups in apple devices/manage backups (in the old days, backups were managed in itunes/edit/preferences).

everything is backed up EXCEPT MUSIC/songs. 

backup TIME and SPACE requirements:  42gb used storage (excluding music) took 18 minutes and 15gb of space on pc, restore took 28 minutes. 

before RESTORING: you need to remove all photos and apps because restore needs a lot of free storage space for the temporary files. 

(obsolete) if itunes says you need to update the ios version, do not do it via itunes. disconnect from itunes and update directly from internet to the phone (although this is moot because backup/restore is now done in "apple devices" app).

about iphone to icloud backup:

each icloud account has its own 5gb free icloud STORAGE. i only use 5% of my 5gb free storage because i only backup my text messages, notepads, contacts, calendar, and reminders to icloud. my text messages since 2007 is only 267mb. amazing !!! i don't need to backup my photos and videos to icloud because i post them to social media. i also keep a copy in my pc. therefore, i have 3 copies. if i backup my photos and videos to icloud, that would make it 4 copies which is overkill and a waste of money buying 100GB extra storage space. 

you CONTROL which apps sync to icloud in settings/<your name>/icloud. i disable the syncing of my photos to icloud to makes sure there is always enough space for the important data (e.g. notepads, text messages and contacts). it also prevents me from getting the annoying "icloud almost full" messages.

to be able to backup your text messages to icloud and send/receive photos via text message, your icloud account and IMESSAGE account name and password should be the same. there's a bug where sometimes, you can't change the imessage account. the solution is to turn off imessage in settings and restart the phone.

(for more of my knowledge bombs, click the "ian's knowledge bombs" banner at the top of this article and choose any article in the table of contents that piques your interest)