My hubby just downloaded an iTunes update for his iPhone, and it wiped out EVERYTHING! All his apps, hundreds of songs, movies, & all the pictures he has taken of our kids over the past 2 years!
Has this happened to anyone?
Any way to get them back?
How do you download an update for iTunes without losing existing files? (About 2 years ago I tried to download an update for my iPod, and it wiped out all of my music as well.)
Thank you all much for your help and advice.
Unfortunately our laptop, which had his iTunes files on it, crashed a few weeks ago, and we had to replace the hard drive. So, he couldn't get the files back when he synced it. :( I have been telling him for nearly 10 years about the need to back up his files, but he just never listens to me about things like that. I back up my pics, on an external drive, and on Snapfish, so luckily most of our pics are safe--just anything taken on his phone is gone :(
Did you sync it before the update? If so, you should be able to restore it from the iTunes account on your computer. If that doesn't work, make an appointment with the Apple store and hopefully they can help you out. Also, might be a good idea to invest in an external hard drive in case this happens in the future.
Was the computer he used to update the phone not the one it has been connected to in the past? If you do that it will wipe your phone clean.
The good news is that IOS 5 will allow all that content to live in "the cloud" instead of on a specific computer. It will also allow you to download updates directly with your phone. This will prevent you from having that problem in the future.
Sorry I can't offer any advise to answer your question but I do have a comment about all the precious pictures so many people have stored on their cameras, phones and computers. BACK THEM UP! Store them on a memory card, download them to a computer and have them put on a disc or thumb drive. Especially anyone that has them on a cell phone or camera. It's so easy to lose these. My daughter in law found that out the hard way. She had 100's of pictures of her new son on her phone and dropped it in the kitchen sink (full of water) one day and lost all of them. She was heartbroken! Now she emails any pictures she takes to me and I store them for her on both my computer and a rewritable disc for her. Double backup!
I sure hope you are able to get you music, apps and movies back, but if you can't, at least you can download them again. But your pictures are a different story. If you can't get them back, they are gone forever. That would be a complete shame.
I asked my husband and he repeated exactly what Amanda H.. said..
Our computer went down and I searched the internet and found an email on the Itunes web site, the person who responded to the email stated that itunes allowed a one time download onto our other computer.
The same thing Amanda H said. If it was the same computer the iphone/ipod needed to be backed up. On e it was back up the you do the update and after the updating it would restored all your apps and music. Also if you login to your apple account you might be able to get all your stuff back... It usually shows all the items you have purchested.
Amanda H. is right...you should have synced the phone prior to the download. I'm not sure if you can restore any of, you may have to call Apple (iTunes) to see if there is anything they can do.
Your iTunes account may have some of it store, but anything recent that had not been synced could be lost.
I would first attached the phone to the computer, open iTunes and sync EVERYTHING! That should get you some stuff back.
