How to get access to backup iPhone files if you no longer have iPhone ???
Let’s say that you have iPhone backup and your’re not longer have iPhone or you’re trying to restore iPhone from backup but it’s failing.
I have been in one of these situation, where I was not able to restore iPhone from local backup where one of my phones broke and I got newer iPhone model.
I looked to backup directory, and what I seen there was only directories and files with no commonsense filenames:
drwxr-xr-x 2 vagrant vagrant 4096 Sep 6 08:23 f4
drwxr-xr-x 2 vagrant vagrant 4096 Sep 6 08:23 f5
drwxr-xr-x 2 vagrant vagrant 4096 Sep 6 08:23 f6
drwxr-xr-x 2 vagrant vagrant 4096 Sep 6 08:23 f7
drwxr-xr-x 2 vagrant vagrant 4096 Sep 6 08:23 f8
drwxr-xr-x 2 vagrant vagrant 4096 Sep 6 08:23 f9
drwxr-xr-x 2 vagrant vagrant 4096 Sep 6 08:23 fa
drwxr-xr-x 2 vagrant vagrant 4096 Sep 6 08:23 fb
drwxr-xr-x 2 vagrant vagrant 4096 Sep 6 08:23 fc
drwxr-xr-x 2 vagrant vagrant 4096 Sep 6 08:23 fd
drwxr-xr-x 2 vagrant vagrant 4096 Sep 6 08:23 fe
drwxr-xr-x 2 vagrant vagrant 4096 Sep 6 08:23 ff
-rw-rw-r-- 1 vagrant vagrant 646402 Sep 6 08:11 Info.plist
-rw-rw-r-- 1 vagrant vagrant 26308608 Sep 6 08:23 Manifest.db
-rw-rw-r-- 1 vagrant vagrant 72968 Sep 6 08:23 Manifest.plist
-rw-rw-r-- 1 vagrant vagrant 189 Sep 6 08:23 Status.plist
-rw-rw-r-- 1 vagrant vagrant 31156 Sep 6 08:11 ff03989743f9e2bb9b86c6a969c546aaaa502918
-rw-rw-r-- 1 vagrant vagrant 1833457 Sep 6 08:14 ff0b7b56ff5fae4cfb88ffd43920a38524bce9db
-rw-rw-r-- 1 vagrant vagrant 8530 Sep 6 08:22 ff0be3c557df13474245636a5bcc446193a0bcef
This is how your backup looks like. No meaning something filenames and directories.
Not really handy :-(
First looks to files inside backup directory landed on Manifest.db file. Running well known file command, helped to identified this file:
$ file Manifest.db
Manifest.db: SQLite 3.x database, user version 2, last written using SQLite version 3024000
This information told me that Manifest.db file is SQLite 3.x database file and at this point, I started examination of it using sqlite3 command line tool. After few queries I decided to use graphical too called “DB Browser for SQLLite” as it makes whole examination match easier.
I started looking closer to what is inside Manifest.db file and I found that most intreating for me is Files table as it contains file hash mapping to real filenames with directory path. Another important information in this table is inside domain column, as it tells to what group files belongs.
I picked few filenames from backup, and run SELECT query to check if my informations are correct.
It’s working !!!
After running few queries, I discovered that files in backup directory are located in separated directories where directory name is this same as two first characters from hashed filename:
\backup\ff$ ls -l
total 23552
-rw-rw-r-- 1 vagrant vagrant 31156 Sep 6 08:11 ff03989743f9e2bb9b86c6a969c546aaaa502918
-rw-rw-r-- 1 vagrant vagrant 1833457 Sep 6 08:14 ff0b7b56ff5fae4cfb88ffd43920a38524bce9db
-rw-rw-r-- 1 vagrant vagrant 8530 Sep 6 08:22 ff0be3c557df13474245636a5bcc446193a0bcef
-rw-rw-r-- 1 vagrant vagrant 69632 Sep 6 08:19 ff0cc36c378ad41b616c82bda1f6ffb864cb8d87
After few successful manual restoration of pictures, I started thinking about automation of this process to make it more useful.
I started writing script in Bash which was working OK, but I decided that I’m going to try write final script in Python 3 to allow its to be run from Windows as well.
And this is how iPhone backup pictures extractor born.
This script is quite simple and his source code is available in my GitHub repository https://github.com/monsoft/iphrestore
Its main purpose is to extract pictures and videos from iPhone backup and place these files in corresponding location inside destination directory.
Extraction
To run extraction process you will have to know where is your iPhone backup located.
If you used idevicebackup2 to make your backup (like I did), location of your backup files is easy to identified as it is [your_choice_directory]\[ID]\. If your backup was done using iTune on Windows, its location will be \Users\[USERNAME]\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup\[ID]\.
[ID] is a directory name which is different per each phone.
Running iphrestore.py script with -h option will show small help with required information about how to run it.
./iphrestore.py -h
iPhone backup pictures extractor v.0.1 (c) 2021 by Irek 'Monsoft' Pelech
usage: iphrestore.py [-h] backup_dir restore_dir
This small script will extract pictures and videos from iPhone backup.
positional arguments:
backup_dir directory where iPhone backup is located
restore_dir directory to save restored pictures
optional arguments:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
With this infromations, we can run extraction process:
$ ./iphrestore.py iphone_irek_backup/4d7d51a92c2d75e4a99d19e8daa62d17a9fc86c9 restored_backup
iPhone backup pictures extractor v.0.1 (c) 2021 by Irek 'Monsoft' Pelech
..............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
Job Done !!!
After script finished its job, we can go to directory restored_backup and check restored files:
/restored_backup/Media/DCIM$ ls
100APPLE 101APPLE 102APPLE 103APPLE 104APPLE 105APPLE 106APPLE
/restored_backup/Media/DCIM$ ls -l 100APPLE/|head
total 4047816
-rw-rw-r-- 1 vagrant vagrant 1737252 Sep 23 14:02 IMG_0002.JPG
-rw-rw-r-- 1 vagrant vagrant 1675372 Sep 23 14:02 IMG_0003.JPG
-rw-rw-r-- 1 vagrant vagrant 170811 Sep 23 14:02 IMG_0004.JPG
-rw-rw-r-- 1 vagrant vagrant 1190123 Sep 23 14:02 IMG_0005.MP4
-rw-rw-r-- 1 vagrant vagrant 268016 Sep 23 14:02 IMG_0006.JPG
-rw-rw-r-- 1 vagrant vagrant 590916 Sep 23 14:02 IMG_0007.JPG
-rw-rw-r-- 1 vagrant vagrant 682919 Sep 23 14:02 IMG_0008.JPG
-rw-rw-r-- 1 vagrant vagrant 169456 Sep 23 14:02 IMG_0009.JPG
-rw-rw-r-- 1 vagrant vagrant 392936 Sep 23 14:02 IMG_0015.JPG
Let’s check file, to be able to confirm that extraction was correct:
$ file IMG_0998.JPG
IMG_0998.JPG: JPEG image data, JFIF standard 1.01, resolution (DPI), density 72x72, segment length 16, baseline, precision 8, 800x533, components 3
Success !!!
I hope that you will find my small script useful, especially that I seen on internet similar application to buy for around $30.