Congratulations if you’ve upgraded from an old iPad to a new iPad Air or Retina iPad Mini! One of the first things you will want to do is transfer your contacts, calendars, photos, and other data from your old iPad to the newer version. Lucky for you – that is very easy to do with iCloud or iTunes.
All you have to do to transfer your old data is start the setup process on your iPad Air or Retina iPad Mini by sliding your finger across the bottom of the screen of your new iPad Air or Retina iPad Mini where it says to slide to set up when you see the welcome screen. At this point you will need to choose the language that you want your iPad to communicate in, and then choose the country or region you are located in. After doing this you can choose your WiFi network and enter the password for that, or choose to Use Cellular if you purchased that type of data connectivity. Some data will transfer without an internet connection, but not all of it, so you want to be able to have internet.
When you have been able to connect to the internet via WiFi or through your cell plan, you can select the location services screen and choose whether or not to enable these services. Some apps such as GPS apps will require the location services to be enabled, but not all apps will require this feature, so it’s up to you to choose this option depending on what you want to do with your device.
Finally, you will be able to tap on “Restore from iCloud backup” from the next screen that appears after you have chosen the location services on your iPad Air or Retina iPad Mini. From there, you can enter your iClouds password, agree to the Terms and Conditions and then verify that you agree to them a second time as you will be prompted to do so. At that point, if you have iClouds backups, your iPad will show them and you can tap the one that you would like to use to transfer data to your new device. Take note that restoring a backup can take quite a bit of time depending on how large the backup file is.
If you want to transfer data from an old iPad to a new iPad Air or Retina iPad Mini from iTunes, make sure you have the most up to date version of iTunes first because your new device will be running at iOS 7 or above and your old iPad may not have been updated to that point. After you are sure iTunes is updated, follow the steps above for your iPad Air or Retina iPad Mini until you get to the Restore option and then choose to iTunes instead of iClouds to restore data from.
After you choose iTunes from the Restore option on your iPad Air or Retina iPad Mini, you will need to connect it to your computer. From that point, iTunes will take you step by step through the process of transferring all your data. Again, the transfer of data to your new device could take awhile if you have a large amount of images, contacts and other data to transfer. Make sure you don’t unplug your iPad Air or Retina iPad Mini from your computer until iTunes tells you that the restore is complete.