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twynne

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Just wondering if you perform a firmware restore on the iPhone will you lose settings, text messages, etc.? If so can you restore from backup after the firmware has been restored?

Thanks,

Tom
 
Just wondering if you perform a firmware restore on the iPhone will you lose settings, text messages, etc.? If so can you restore from backup after the firmware has been restored?

Thanks,

Tom

Yes, you will lose everything.. so ensure you backup in itunes first..

after the restore you can then choose to restore from that backup or start a fresh 🙂
 
i itunes on a pc right click on yout iphone and the select backup. once this has finished restore the iphone. then the restore has ended it will ask you if you want to setup as new or restore from backup. if you restore from backup all the setting will be copied back
 
When I updated last night it did an automatic backup (before) and restore (after) the firmware update. Only thing that seemed to have been lost so far was my daily Alarm that I just added again - oh and my timezone had been set to Cupertino so I had to change it back to UK. It even remembered which webpages I'd had open in Safari.
 
One further question - does music get erased as well? I only ask as I'm away from home at the moment and my iTunes music is on an external drive which I don't have with me. I don't want to restore at this moment if I'll lose my music.

Cheers,

Tom
 
A word of warning guys. I did a restore last night and it did not backup any of the apps that I downloaded directly on the iPhone.

I had bought quite a few directly on the iPhone and these were all missing after the restore, however, any that I had bought through iTunes were sync'd without any problems.

To resolve this problem I had to remember which ones I had previously purchased directly on the iPhone and then click the Buy Now button next to the app. iTunes recognised that I had previously purchased the app and downloaded at no extra charge. Phew!

From now on, I am only going to download apps in iTunes.
 
Interesting. I downloaded some on the phone yesterday, and when I connected up to iTunes this morning it asked me if I wanted to transfer them from the phone to the Mac. I did, and they now appear in iTunes so I would assume they will restore automatically now.

Did you maybe get prompted but ignore it?
 
Interesting. I downloaded some on the phone yesterday, and when I connected up to iTunes this morning it asked me if I wanted to transfer them from the phone to the Mac. I did, and they now appear in iTunes so I would assume they will restore automatically now.

Did you maybe get prompted but ignore it?

I would have expected to get that kind of a prompt but never did. I have upgraded to the latest firmware since. Will try downloading an app to the iPhone and sync, see what happens.
 
Strange. More quirky behaviour then!

As you mention you've upgraded, can you answer my question above by any chance? Did you lose your music when you did it?
 
Strange. More quirky behaviour then!

As you mention you've upgraded, can you answer my question above by any chance? Did you lose your music when you did it?

You do lose your music off the iPhone but the Restore "image" remembers all the music that was on your iPhone so once you have restored your iPhone and activated it begins syncing all the music back again. The iPhone ends up in a state that was exactly the same as when you hit the restore button.

The way I did it was by going into iTunes Prefs, deleting all backups of the iPhone. Then connect the iPhone and it does a fresh new backup. Once this is done then hit the Restore button. This process takes about an hour in total so be prepared to wait. Let me know if you have other questions.
 
Thanks for replying.

I'm a bit confused by the backup then, as when I connect my iPhone and it does its own backup it takes only seconds. Is there a different type of backup created by the Restore function that includes all of your music, or do you have to do some type of 'manual' backup?

And presumably this special backup takes up an amount of space equivalent to the storage currently on your iPhone?? (Which will cause me a problem at the moment as my Mac only has about 6GB free!) 😱
 
As stated, upgrading does wipe the phone, requiring a restore to get your settings and content back. One additional thing I've noticed though, is the restore did not keep the passwords to my various wifi access points. I had to re-enter them, so make sure you remember them or have them handy.
 
Thanks for replying.

I'm a bit confused by the backup then, as when I connect my iPhone and it does its own backup it takes only seconds. Is there a different type of backup created by the Restore function that includes all of your music, or do you have to do some type of 'manual' backup?

And presumably this special backup takes up an amount of space equivalent to the storage currently on your iPhone?? (Which will cause me a problem at the moment as my Mac only has about 6GB free!) 😱

No, there is only 1 type of backup and that's it. I'm not sure how much space it takes. The only reason I recommend deleteing the backup and then doing a sync is just to be on the safe side - this is not Apple recommended but is recommended by my paranoia.
 
No, there is only 1 type of backup and that's it. I'm not sure how much space it takes. The only reason I recommend deleteing the backup and then doing a sync is just to be on the safe side - this is not Apple recommended but is recommended by my paranoia.

Thanks again. I suspect the backup only contains the list of content, which then gets restored from your iTunes library back to the device. This would make sense rather than storing (another) copy of all your music on your laptop when (for most people) it's already there.

In my case even that will be a problem as I don't have the library with me and wouldn't be able to put my music back. I think I'll leave it for this evening when I'm home to be on the safe side.
 
Well I've done the restore this evening, and unfortunately it seems the 'standard' backup does NOT back up the music on your device. Settings restored fine, but I'm now having to manually copy all of my music back - about 13gb worth! 😡

I'm not sure what you have to do to make it restore your music, but it didn't give me any separate option for this. Just posting this as a warning to anyone else looking for an answer to the question.
 
Thinking about this a bit further it's probably whether your iPhone is set to sync music automatically or manually that makes the difference. I'm guessing the poster above is set to automatic, in which case it makes sense that it will just put your music back after the restore. In my case I have to have it as manual as I have over 30gb of music which clearly won't fit.

If someone else knows of a way to make backup remember your manually sync'd music it might be helpful to post it here.

Cheers,

Tom
 
In my case I have to have it as manual as I have over 30gb of music which clearly won't fit.

You could just create playlists for the iPhone and tell iTunes to only sync those playlists and have it set to automatic. That's how I have mine set up.
 
Makes sense, but it would be a *large* playlist. 😀 Do you know if there's a limit to the size of a playlist?
 
Doesn't have to be a large playlist, it could be multiple smaller ones. I have 3 different playlists I sync with my iPhone.
 
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