Computer has crashed

[debs01]

The computer I use to back up my iPhone and iPad has crashed.

I've searched and found lots of information that talks about using different programs, but still am not sure how to change to a different computer. Can someone please direct me to some easy instructions?

Thanks!
Debbie

 

[NYHorsewoman]

Same problem here. After speaking with Apple they said there's nothing you can do. You can switch to another computer! What!?!?! Anyway, they said to just back up via the cloud.

 

[cpc12]

Should have bought a Mac. They don't really crash. PCs are dead.

 

[Nakedbabytoes]

What we had to do was hook up the iPad to the new computer and when it prompts you that the device is synced to another computer, choose "do not sync with this computer". Then right click on your iPad device in the left pane of iTunes source window and choose "transfer purchases". Let your computer transfer stuff over from iPad to computer. Then after it is done, right click again and choose "backup this device". It will make a copy of everything on your iPad to the new computer. This might take a while(for my son's touch, it took nearly and hour). You should now see everything in iTunes that is was able to transfer over. It might not be able to transfer everything you have but it should be a decent amount of what is on there. Having the cloud is nice, you can definately do it that way as well but you might have to pay initially for the amount of storage necessary to do so before transferring to your computer. The cloud didn't exist when we had our HD get fried by a house flood mishap(darn ice maker lines!) so we got 90% of what our devices had on them at the time but did loose some things.
It might be worth it to you to buy a cheap mass storage device and backup your info on there occasionally. We learned the hard way that occasional maintainence of electronic info saves time & money in the end. We have a mass storage device(500GB Maxtor), 2 tower HDs, and a laptop. Once a month we backup copy everything to the Maxtor.