iPhone

[Boulevard44]

I recently lost my hard drive on my iMac G5 (2005 Tiger OS). Fortunately, at that time, I had backed up my address book onto my iPhone 3Gs.
Yesterday, I tried to regain my contacts from my iPhone back onto my iMac, instead, it deleted all my contacts from my iPhone. Is this reversable?

[Giaguara]

Restore to your AddressBook backup from any other place you have it backed up.

If you have a copy of the old hd, in it ~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook contains your user data.

With 10.4 I don't think you have a time machine setup.
Would you have a backup at .mac/.me?
AddressBook > File > Export > Address Book Archive... does a simple backup.

I switched to using that when in 2003 after a mobile phone sync gone wrong, every single phone number of all my contacts that had a US (or US format) phone number disappeared. So any time I do any major sync I make a backup first, just in case.
Note to self: hmm, perhaps I should sync more often .. to prevent damages of losing contacts when a phone ends up dying drowned in tea etc.

[fryke]

MobileMe _really_ helps in such cases.

[CharlieJ]

Did iTunes make a backup of your device?

On Mac ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/
On XP \Documents and Settings\<user>\Application Data\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup (i think)

You will see folders that are named as random letters/numbers. If so, yes you have a backup.

Charlie