Restoring Contacts after a "Restore"

[dhend25]

Hi all,

I'm another victim of the 3.01 update. Locked by 3G into "Recovery Mode". My PC wouldn't recognize my phone so I used my wife's PC laptop to do a restore.

Once my phone was operational again, I connected back to my PC and got my music apps and photos, but can't seem to recover my contacts.

When I click on the "INFO" tab it asks if I want to sync with several different things like "OUTLOOK", Windows address book, google contacts, etc. I tried "Outlook" as that seemed to be the default, but my phones is showing no contacts.

Any help would be appreciated! I hope I haven't lost them!

Thanks!

DH

 

[-aggie-]

You lost them if you didn't ever sync to any of those before all this. I have mine synced to Address Book. Sorry this happened to you, since it seems a lot of people have had bad luck with this update that was only supposed to fix an SMS hack that has yet to happen to anyone.

You might be able to restore from your old backup and go back to 3.0 though. Try checking to see if you have the backup before OS 3.0.1.

 

[dhend25]

Thanks "iphone.aggie" for your reply.

I thought that syncing with itunes was backing up everything, and I did it on a regular basis.

I got my music, apps, and photos back, why not the "contacts". The update process "bricked" my iphone. My only recourse was to do a "restore". I didn't realize that I needed to synch my "contacts" with one of those outside entities.

This is really upsetting!!! It'll take me months to manually enter my lost contacts, that is the ones I can remember.

Anyway, thanks for your kind reply.

dh

 

[jmann]

If you have a backup in your iTunes you can use a program like "Backup Extractor" to try to get your contacts back. That might work.

 

[-aggie-]

Thanks "iphone.aggie" for your reply.

I thought that syncing with itunes was backing up everything, and I did it on a regular basis.

I got my music, apps, and photos back, why not the "contacts". The update process "bricked" my iphone. My only recourse was to do a "restore". I didn't realize that I needed to synch my "contacts" with one of those outside entities.

This is really upsetting!!! It'll take me months to manually enter my lost contacts, that is the ones I can remember.

Anyway, thanks for your kind reply.

dh

you would've been able to restore your contacts from a backup but you said you restored from your wife's computer. You then synced with your computer to get what you synced, correct? So, you could restore from backup from YOUR computer if you have the backup from before 3.0.1.

 

[dhend25]

I don't know how to get the back-up from before the 3.01? I don't know how to check to see if I have it.

dh

 

[jmann]

I don't know how to get the back-up from before the 3.01? I don't know how to check to see if I have it.

dh

Check on this screen in the preferences window.

 

[dhend25]

The only "Back-up" showing is the last one I did when I re-synched my phone after the restore. So I guess I don't have anything before that.

Thanks anyway.

dh

 

[-aggie-]

The only "Back-up" showing is the last one I did when I re-synched my phone after the restore. So I guess I don't have anything before that.

Thanks anyway.

dh

Sorry to hear that. Well, you can fix stuff like this happening in the future my making backups of your backup file. It's located:

On Windows XP:
C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Application Data\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup

On Windows Vista:
C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\AppleComputer\MobileSync\Backup

Also, you can sync your contacts with Windows Address Book (it's the easiest) to enable you to get them back in the future.

 

[dhend25]

Dear iphone.aggie,

Thanks for the link information. That will tell me where the backups are located.

I think what did me in was the fact that I had to do the "Restore" process on another computer. My computer would not recognize my iphone as a device. This made it impossible to restore from my own laptop. The Apple tech support guy on the phone had me check "preferences" on my computer to see what my last backup was. When I told him that it had been earlier that day, he said "Good". That means you'll be able to reload your "contacts". That was before either he or I knew that I would be restoring from another computer. We ended our phone session after it became obvious that my computer was not going to recognize my iphone. I asked him specifically about the restoration process and how I would be able to restore my "contacts". He said it would be pretty much automatic, again assuming that it would be done on my computer.

I did backup my files earlier yesterday before my iphone froze with a device that goes into my hard drive and backs up things like photos, documents, mp3's, and other types of non-application stuff. You don't suppose that if I put that stuff back on, it would have my iphone backup information?

I'm not sure that my contacts would be the type of files this devices backs up.

Anyway, thanks again for your helpful information. I'll make sure that I don't make this mistake again.

Best,

DH

 

[-aggie-]

SNIP...I did backup my files earlier yesterday before my iphone froze with a device that goes into my hard drive and backs up things like photos, documents, mp3's, and other types of non-application stuff. You don't suppose that if I put that stuff back on, it would have my iphone backup information?

I'm not sure that my contacts would be the type of files this devices backs up.

SNIP

It's possible the backup of your computer might have the file you are looking for. However, the contacts are something located in the iPhone backup (and also in the Address Book had you ever synced to that, which you have not). The iPhone backup "folder" is actually a long alphanumeric file that contains files of all the stuff for a backup. You can't easily get to any information on there (however it can be done from some googling I did in the past). So, only if the computer backup contains that file/folder can you get back what you had before the restore. I'm doubting the computer backup will have it, but now you know, so you can make backups of it in the future. I have my iPhone backed up on all my computers just for the reasons that happened to you. I always pray nothing goes wrong every time I restore, so I don't have to see how well my backups work!

 

[dhend25]

You're probably right about the "back-up" I performed. It's mostly for defined files like music, photos, and doc's.

I'll definitely be backing up my contacts in other places in the future.

Thanks again for your vey helpful comments and suggestions!

Best,

Dh

 

[xewxews]

If your contacts are all gone after restoring your iPhone, you can use FonePaw iPhone Data Recovery, which helps to scan your iTunes backup files and restore iPhone contacts for you.