Just Curious: Effect of iPhone Restore on 1Password File (Dropbox Sync enabled)

justhere
justhere
Community Member
in iOS

Hello,

If I restore my iphone using a backup that's two weeks old, what will the Dropbox sync do?

  • Will it sync my other three devices to the two-week old 1Password file on my iPhone, or...
  • Will it sync my iphone to the most current version of my 1Password file that's on the other three devices?

Thanks!

John

Comments

  • Megan
    Megan
    1Password Alumni

    Hi John ( @justhere )

    When 1Password syncs it will give the newest data priority. If you restore your data onto your iPhone, that restore will be considered the most recent data and will take priority in a sync. In cases where 1Password is unable to determine which data is newest, it will save the conflicting information in 'Conflict Fields' within the entry so that you can manually update the fields if necessary.

    I'm curious as to why you are restoring to a backup when you have more current data on your other devices. Are you having a problem with the data on your devices that I could help you with?

    Please let me know if I can be of any assistance. :)

  • littlebobbytables
    littlebobbytables
    1Password Alumni

    In a way this is a pretty interesting general question as there could be a lot of reasons why somebody might need to do a restore that aren't 1Password related. Maybe the phone is acting funny and somebody has suggested a restore.

    Which makes me curious as to your response Megan. Am I understanding you correctly in that a restore would result in a 1Password vault with current timestamps rather than timestamps from when the backup was taken? Without knowing any better I'd have assumed the opposite, that the timestamps would have been from two weeks ago which would make the Dropbox copy seem more recent no?

  • justhere
    justhere
    Community Member

    Here's what happened:

    • I have one (device-only) file on my iPhone that contains to-do's, shopping, projects, and, yes, a couple of codes that shouldn't be there.
    • One day this week, that file was suddenly gone. (Not sure if it was me or the iOS upgrade.)
    • Given that I'm on a security push, I was too ashamed to make the calls required to get my codes back.
    • So I backed up my iPhone, then restored it to two weeks ago (last available), put a copy of the entire notes file into 1Password, then restored my iPhone back to that day's state.

    Because I immediately did a second restore back to the same day, I didn't lose all new 1Password files created in the past two weeks. But it did make me wonder...

    I guess this is one more reason to be disciplined about backing up 1Password files regularly, outside of Dropbox.

    Also, let's say I really did lose two weeks, or two months worth of new entries into 1Password. The quickest fix is to open up 1Password on my PC, restore from backup, and choose the most recent, good file. (Just checked.) Looks like 1Password will create a new backup several times in a day (probably if I made many changes that day), or go one week without creating a new backup (probably if I go a week without making a change.)

    Digression: None of these iPhone-restores interrupted my two-factor authentication apps (VIP Access & Google Authenticator). Which is kind of scary -- if a thief decrypted my iPhone backup & hacked my iOS PIN, they'd have all of my two-factor authentication apps. Which I knew before, but only in theory. Now I know for sure.

    Thank you very much for your responses & this forum. I appreciate it!

    John

  • Megan
    Megan
    1Password Alumni

    Hi @littlebobbytables‌

    Am I understanding you correctly in that a restore would result in a 1Password vault with current timestamps rather than timestamps from when the backup was taken?

    Ideally, yes. Because if you are restoring your data from a backup, it is assumed that this is the data that you want to use. It's not helpful if that restored data is then wiped out by the "newer" data on your other devices.

    However, these questions peaked my curiosity, so I've done a bit of testing here, and is seems that, right now sync is not prioritizing the restored data. This issue has been filed with our developers, so we'll do what we can to ensure that restoring a backup does reset the timestamps on the data so it is not wiped out by a sync.

    I hope this makes sense, but if you have any questions please let me know!

    internal reference number: OPM-1172

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