Practical Mobile Forensics - Third Edition

Understanding the backup structure

When the iPhone is backed up to a computer, the backup files are stored in a backup directory, which exists as a 40-character hexadecimal string and corresponds to the Unique Device Identifier (UDID) of the device. The backup process may take a considerable amount of time depending on the size of the data stored on the iPhone during the first backup. The location of the backup directory in which your backup data is stored depends on the computer's operating system. The following table displays a list of the common operating systems and the default locations of the iTunes backup directory:

Operating system	Backup directory location
Windows XP	\Documents and Settings\[user name]\Application Data\Apple ...