WTF? I jus Restored iPhone 5 from iphone 4s & a bunch of stuff is missing!

had the same issue as you. Going from the 3g to the 4, and then from the 4 to the 4S, every time I restored the new phone from a backup of my old phone, it transferred all apps, settings, photos, etc. The only thing ever missing was the music.

From the 4S to the 5, no matter what I did, I couldn't get my apps onto the new phone through a restore. I'm not sure if it's an iOS 6 issue, or an iP5 thing, but it is what it is. Fortunately, I don't keep many apps on my phone at any given time so copying them all back on wasn't a problem. The app data I had synced to my computer was loaded onto the new iP5 when I synced the apps manually.

VideoNewbie said:

My photos are there, but all the separate albums i created from those photos are not.

also most notably ALL of my apps and obviously all those settings within those apps are all missing.

the only apps that remain are the default factory apps.

i thought that a simple restore makes a mirror image of your old phone

how do i truly get back everything that was on my old phone? what could i have done differently during the iphoen 4s backup process? i was told all i need to do is to press "backup" and it would backup everything.

right now from what i can see photo albums, apps, all the app ssettings and contents, etc. are all missing. is there anything else that i might be missing which arent restored in a normal backup?

thanks

Click to expand...

Every time I switch from a new iphone I do the following steps:

1. Plug in my old iphone and run a full sync, I also check the proper settings on itunes, like syncing apps, bookmarks, etc.
2. Once a backup is complete and all the apps are sync'd with my computer I plug in my new iPhone.
3. When prompted two options I select "restore from backup"
4. From there I wait, and my new iphone will mirror from my old iphone.

as a note sometimes the photos take a little time to populate, because when I restored to my iPhone 5 I only saw like 300 photos and freaked out. After a few minutes it restored it to the full amount of photo's that were on my old iPhone.

luqtotheman said:

Every time I switch from a new iphone I do the following steps:

1. Plug in my old iphone and run a full sync, I also check the proper settings on itunes, like syncing apps, bookmarks, etc.
2. Once a backup is complete and all the apps are sync'd with my computer I plug in my new iPhone.
3. When prompted two options I select "restore from backup"
4. From there I wait, and my new iphone will mirror from my old iphone.

as a note sometimes the photos take a little time to populate, because when I restored to my iPhone 5 I only saw like 300 photos and freaked out. After a few minutes it restored it to the full amount of photo's that were on my old iPhone.

Click to expand...

This is the exact procedure that I've used to migrate a 3Gs to iPhone 4 and two weeks ago from iPhone 4 to iPhone 5. Everything transferred, all settings were preserved; even text messages transferred intact. I think the key is to run a complete backup and then immediately (before changing any data) use the backup to restore the new iPhone.

The first backup that iPhone 5 used to restore was the original backup created on the day that I set up my iPhone 4 (I wasn't offered a choice of backup to use at that time.) Stuff was missing from the iPhone 5, obviously, at that point. Via iTunes, I chose to restore from backup again (right click the arrow next to your device name while it's connected to iTunes) and then was able to choose which backup I wanted to use. That time I chose the most recent backup and everything transferred completely intact. It took two times altogether.

HTH