BEWARE !!! Trying to upgrade may DELETE your Back-Ups!

This is scary. I'm about to update my both my husband's 3GS and my own. Then I see this. I don't know what to do now.

I REALLY hope they find a fix quickly for you.

Cascadians said:

[/COLOR]It is WRONG that Apple's servers have the ability to reach into our hard drives, into iTunes, and delete our Back-Ups! !!!!!

I am beyond pissed and have no idea how to make this phone work.

How can I even tell what iOS it's on now? ??????

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They didnt do that....

My encrypted backups were deleted and those within the last 30 days. I was able to restore from a backup in April. I also got the 5000 error multiple times but did not realize it was deleting my backups. It took an additional 3 hours to restore my iPhone to what the backups would have done...total 8 hours to install and upgrade and I have been doing this since the original iDay!!! Have to say this is the worst release/update ever, however; it is only improved by the iOS 5 upgrades.

Apple...you sucked this time around and hope you learn from and correct these issues that have never happened before!

Cascadians said:

Oh yes they did. The senior advisor said it is happening a lot now. They don't know why yet.

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I understand that you are frustrated with the situation, but there is no malicious intent on Apple's part here. It is a technical issue that they will have to look into and resolve.

No one is trying to reach into your harddrive and delete your backup.

No offense to the folks that you have been interaction with on the phone, but they shouldn't be making wild guesses about the nature of the issue when they clearly have no idea. This is exactly how widespread misinformation propagates.

Cascadians said:

iTunes is on my hard drive. Apple's upgrade servers DELETED my iPhone back-ups. They DELETED all trace of existence of my iPhone on my iMac's hard drive. Years of tweaking and arranging and customization and photos -- GONE.

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No, they didnt reach into your harddrive and delete your backups, that occured when YOU were trying to back up before upgrading. They didnt log into your pc, find your backups and delete them. Sorry just didnt happen. It happens when you backup your phone, old ones get deleted for room or because they're more current.

Cascadians said:

No, I upgraded manually BEFORE trying to upgrade and checked iTunes Preferences to be sure the upgrade was there. It was. Trying to upgrade DELETED all back-ups. They're gone.

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It sounds like a bug in the way iTunes is backing up / upgrading the iPhone. Yes, it's a serious problem, but no, it's not like Apple's servers are deleting stuff off your computer. The deleting is happening locally, by programs that are ON YOUR COMPUTER.

I've had tons of issues with mine since updating.. but luckily did not lose backups (even though it said they were corrupted... so hmm.. maybe i did??)... but i still have all my data ON the phone...

anyway.. this goes to show, another reason why you should have things backed up elsewhere. I have things backed up with Time Machine on an external HDD.

I had issues when upgrading my 3gs to ios5 (my husbands worked fine). My music and videos are now on iTunes but not on my phone, while my apps, contacts, notes, etc are on my phone but not in my iphone. My dilemma is that when I receive my 4s next week in the mail and sync - what will happen? To me, my contacts are BY FAR my most valued information on my phone, followed quickly by an app which houses passwords and other sensitive information. My music I can always re-download.

While I should be EXCITED to receive my 4s in the mail, I spent today DREADING it for fear of losing my contacts information. However, I did find an awesome FREE app that backed up my information by sending it to my email as a v-card (not even sure what that is?). All I know is it's a small attachment, and if I do lose my contacts all I need to do is tap the attachment and they're loaded back into my new phone. ::sigh of relief::

I won't post the name of the apps here as I don't know the rules - I have no vested interest in any of them. I'm just happy to have some of the worry gone - and know that if my information is lost at least I can get my contacts (which means my business, my money) back. If anyone would like the name of the app, private message me, or let me know that it's ok to post it in this thread.

Is this isolated to 3GS's? My 4 upgraded fine, my brother's 3GS had this issue.

So let me get this straight. You have an iPhone, you backed it up, then your backup got deleted right? I'm sorry, but the only thing that is stored in MY backup files are settings and whatnot. All of my pictures, contacts, programs, and other sensitive information is on my hard drive. So if I lost a backup, all I have to do is set up my iPhone, put my contacts, pictures, programs, and other stuff back on the phone and arrange it. An hour at most.

You've made up your mind that Apple screwed you over and you're pissed. I understand that, but holy crap, maybe you shouldn't keep 'years' of such sensitive information on a mobile device.

I blame George Bush.

Time machine to the rescue, iPhone 4 it happened to me with the GM.

Time Machine is your friend.

This happened to me. Lost my iPad backup. Just gave up and started over.

Cascadians, you are 100% correct that iTunes should not have deleted your backups. It was iTunes that deleted your backups do to some sort of bug though... NOT Apples servers, regardless of what you were told by the reps you talked to.

In terms of your time machine backups... did you try and restore iTunes? If so, that was NOT what you needed to do. You need to restore the iPhone backup data. If you close iTunes, restore the iPhone backup data located in "/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup" then you should have your backups back.

Years of "tweaking" really? There ain't that many settings to tweak.

CrAkD said:

Years of "tweaking" really? There ain't that many settings to tweak.

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lol, I missed that one.. Seriously though, I can fully customize the settings on a set up as new phone in about 3 minutes.