For my iPhone, why is the "restore from backup" option not available in iTunes?
Apologies - to get the picture in, I need to 'answer' rather than comment...

I'm really not certain whether it's because you're on an old version, or that your machine can see no backup, but I get a totally different Backup section


I'm not sure I can contribute further, sorry - because I don't remember how iTunes 10 looked &amp; I'm on iOS 7 myself.

There is the possibility that Apple has essentially locked out iOS 5 now - but please don't take my word for it; I've seen posts about it but have no authoritative answer. 

(Please don't -1 me for this 'non-answer', folks ;-)