Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

NOOB question : How to clean install without losing anything?

F

fredericroumi

macrumors member
Original poster
Sep 19, 2012
53
7
So my iPhone sometimes crashes or freezes. Went to the Genius Bar and they were able to see the errors. Was told to wipe and reinstall all my stuff without restoring from a backup (they said the errors will just get transferred into the backup and onto the new install).

What I want to know is how can I do this without losing anything? I have so many important things on my phone and cannot afford to lose any of it...I'm honestly very stressed out about this!!

Really sorry if this is a dumb question, I'm a real noob!!! Thanks for all your help!!!
 
So I just "Erase all content and settings" and then restore my latest iCloud backup???
 
fredericroumi said:
So I just "Erase all content and settings" and then restore my latest iCloud backup???
Click to expand...

Yes, but make sure that the music, movies, or TV shows that existed on your computer are still there.

They're the one thing that isn't backed up to iCloud. The way it's supposed to work is that iCloud restores everything but that and then you re-sync with your computer and they copy back over.

The only catch to the plan which is otherwise the right way to go.
 
I thought the plan was to do a clean install and not restore any backups? You'll have to forget about iCloud and unless you want to faff about with programs which help restore your SMS etc then just accept that you're going to lose certain things. You can export photos & videos to your pc/Mac/the cloud, and you can get all your apps back from the App Store, but a clean install is a clean install. No backups. You can then create a fresh iCloud backup once you have reinstalled everything.
 
There is a way with iBackupBot where you save your messages (sms.db) and restore as new. Then you make a backup of your "naked" phone and change the sms.db from this naked backup. Then you have your messages back. After that you sync everything back with iTunes.

There are many tutorials about this way, just search for it.
 
I have never seen an advantage in the clean install thing. I have restored from backup all of my iPhone's and never had a single problem. I do not have time to do much less. My restored device and in perfect order and ready to go.

I use the cloud but also do weekly backups to iTunes and the restore only takes minutes and you are good to go!
 
Before to do a complete clean install, try to just reset settings to default. It may work.

It's in Settings > General

Let us know =)
 
Newtons Apple said:
I have never seen an advantage in the clean install thing. I have restored from backup all of my iPhone's and never had a single problem. I do not have time to do much less. My restored device and in perfect order and ready to go.

I use the cloud but also do weekly backups to iTunes and the restore only takes minutes and you are good to go!
Click to expand...

Maybe you never seen an advantage but it's a well known issue that many bugs are passed down by faulty backups. That's why Apple suggests to restore and setup as new when there's software issues.
 
Applejuiced said:
Maybe you never seen an advantage but it's a well known issue that many bugs are passed down by faulty backups. That's why Apple suggests to restore and setup as new when there's software issues.
Click to expand...

If so, it means I have never had any "bugs" from my first iPhone many years ago.

And yes it is ALWAYS suggested that everyone erase and re-install, but it does not fix anything many times.
 
Newtons Apple said:
If so, it means I have never had any "bugs" from my first iPhone many years ago.

And yes it is ALWAYS suggested that everyone erase and re-install, but it does not fix anything many times.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure it's "many," but part of the point of doing this is to separate hardware issues from software issues. It's not going to fix hardware, and it's not intended to.
 
Newtons Apple said:
If so, it means I have never had any "bugs" from my first iPhone many years ago.

And yes it is ALWAYS suggested that everyone erase and re-install, but it does not fix anything many times.
Click to expand...

It's well documented by Apple that it fixes software issues.
It's a good possibility you never had any problems but others did in the past and advised by Apple reps to do that.
 
I managed to transfer my messages from a current backup of 8.1, to a backup I made after I restore to factory settings (mandatory update to 8.3). So effectively I had the benefits of a clean restore without losing any of my messages or message attachments. They were perfectly preserved back to 2011, from my first iPhone. I used iExplorer to extract the SMS database and SMS attachment data, then I restored my phone to factory settings, backed it up, and used iBackupBot to insert the old SMS database and attachment data into the new factory-clean backup.

From there, I just restored my modified backup to the phone, and it worked. Assuming you know where to look, it is possible to extract your Photos, Call History, and Voicemails and restore them the same way I restored my messages. I use iCloud Photo Library, and I didn't care about my voicemails or anything, so I just put them on my computer with iExplorer as another backup (along with PDFs of my Messages and a backup of attachments).
 
NOOB question : How to clean install without losing anything?

Surely resetting and setting up as new is not all that painful. Reason I say that is because when you set up as new phone you lose messages and pictures but you could upload pictures to one drive or similar beforehand.

When you set up as new don't you get prompted to login to App Store and that downloads apps ( to start afresh with)?

Also contacts can be synced with a mail account so that's not so bad..

So surely there are ways around simply losing all data just to set up the phone as new?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back