IPhone contacts lost- bad sync

I lost most of my contacts when I finally updated my iPhone to ios 5. I did it at the iPhone store (bc my computer was being weird that week). I told the Apple Genius there that I knew I'd synced it the night before, but I wasn't sure when I'd backed it up last. He said it didn't matter bc it automatically backs it up when it syncs… Not sure if this is true or not, in retrospect.

We updated my phone. Got home to reload all my apps/music/etc. And it turns out the last time id actually backed up my iPhone was almost a year before. So I lost a huge chunk of my contacts (any i had added in the last year.

I have a gmail account and an outlook account attached to my phone (the gmail saves all my notes), and I have windows vista. Does anyone know where (if at all) my computer may have saved my contacts at any point? I sync my
Phone all the time. I just was hoping someone else knew where else my contacts could possibly be.

The iPhone should backup contacts every single time you sync unless you changed some settings.

The backup should be in the main settings in iTunes when you connect to the computer.

Do you have iClouds on your iPhone, if so you can do them from it on your computer, through iClouds. Just google iClouds and it will come up. Otherwise try what the previous person suggested, if that doesn't work you can do it through your Gmail. Just google it.