Would the iPhone get completely wiped off when 1st backing up on new laptop

Question

Hi,
My laptop has died and I am about to authorise a new laptop (this will be my 2nd) to be able to backup my iPhone.
I've heard some horror stories going around that when I first backup an iPhone in a new machine everything gets completely wiped off.
Is this true? I have 150 applications and gigabites of music. As you can imagine I don't want to start it from scratch or lose everything.
Any ideas?
By the way, the previous iPhone backups from the dead laptop are saved on the harddrive which has been saved when the laptop died.

Answer 1

By design, the iphone will sync itunes content with ONE computer at a time. If you attempt to sync such content with a second computer, all itunes content will first be erased from your phone & then replaced with the content from the second computer.
Your photos & music you ripped on your own will have to be extracted from your phone using third party software, as Apple makes no provision for this since it's expected that you maintain a backup. Your photos were reduced in resolution when synced to your phone to display on the phone. There is no way to recover their full resolution. You need to recover these photos & music before you proceed. Photos in your camera roll can be imported to your new computer.
http://www.wideanglesoftware.com/touchcopy/
Next, disable auto sync when an ipod/iphone is connected, under preferences in itunes, which in Windows I believe is under the edit menu.
Next, go up to Store>Authorize this computer.
Next, make sure you have at least one contact & one event in whatever supported program you use for that purpose on your computer(Outlook, Windows Address Book). They can be fake, it doesn't matter.
Next, connect your phone. DO NOT SYNC at this point.
Right click the phone in the device pane & select "Reset Warnings".
Next, go up to "File", "Transfer purchases made on this ipod/iphone to this computer".
Your purchased music/apps will then be transferred to itunes. Music you ripped on your own will not. You'll have to restore that from your backup, which apparently doesn't exist, or use third party software already referenced.
Next, right click again & select BACKUP.
Next, restore your phone from the backup you just made.
This must be followed by a sync to restore your itunes content. Which is selected from the various tabs. You should get a prompt regarding your contacts & calendar asking to "merge" or "replace". Select "merge"
That's as good as it gets.
This is what's included in the backup you'll make & restore from:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1766
This is how to restore from that backup, as already referenced, when prompted to create another backup before you restore, decline as we will use the backup we made when we started:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1414