How do I back up my iPhone contacts to iTunes over USB?
Connect your iPhone to your computer. Open iTunes and select your iPhone in the sidebar on the left. Select the Info tab and choose from one of the available options based on your operating system.
I sync mine with my google id
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iTunes can create backups of your contacts, photos, videos, text messages, notes, etc. of your iOS device when you: * Sync with iTunes (disabled if you have iCloud backup turned on) * Right-click (or Control-click) the iOS device in iTunes under Devices and choose Back Up
Use these steps to manually back up your iOS device using iTunes:
- Connect your iOS device to a computer with the latest version of iTunes installed
- Select your iOS device in iTunes under Devices
- Right-click (or Control-click) the device and select Back Up
Resource: How to back up and restore from a backup http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1766
In recent firmwares, you can use every Exchange-Provider (including Gmail) for over-the-air-sync of contacts, mails etc.
I use this feature to sync my contacts with my Gmail account, but you can use that as a backup too.
What procedure did you follow exactly? Note that the normal process for contacts is to sync the iPhone with the "Address Book" application. During the Sync iTunes also makes a backup, which can be used if you accidentally wipe the phone.
You can also tell iTunes to replace the information on the phone with what is on your Mac, which defaults to the Address Book's contacts. If you did a replace and there weren't any contacts in Address Book, then you could get what you saw.
Does any of that make sense?