N00b moment of panic, and then relief: an iPhone restore tale

[fridayxiii]

I got my 3G S on July 2, and love my iPhone more by the day. I've loaded up 40+ apps, all my contacts, wallpapers, yada yada. It's been a perfect relationship so far, all honeymoon.

So tonight I saw the notice of 3.0.1 and figure I'll upgrade. First, the firmware download fails via iTunes three or four times. Then, the extract & install begins, and fails. I get a pretty picture of a USB cable on my iPhone, and an iTunes CD graphic. I shut down & restart iTunes only to be greeted by a message that I need to restore my iPhone. No, please no. I foresaw everything being wiped, and getting only my apps back via sync.

But much to my surprise, glee, and total relief: everything was restored to my iPhone *whew*. All contacts, wallpapers, notes, my pics in Picture Safe - hell, even my career progress in AC-130 & Ferrari Evolution - was restored! Can't tell you how relieved I am. But also, on the flip side, I'm a tad freaked cuz I now know how totally reliant I am on, and addicted to, my iPhone.

Props to the Apple developers for making the iPhone backup & restore via iTunes as total & complete as one could ever want.

PS: if there's a sticky somewhere on these forums for iPhone noobs, one tip might be: fear not if ye must restore, for all your content shall reappear.

 

[lionheartednyhc]

If you think that was scary, try jailbreaking it

For the future, a blog is probably where this post would go.

 

[WesTCoasTMouA]

Damn, you must of been so happy when everything got restored.

 

[fridayxiii]

Damn, you must of been so happy when everything got restored.

Yes, yes I was. I figured I'd get apps back, but resigned myself to reentering contacts, sending wallpaper, etc. all over again. Glad that wasn't the case.

 

[iPhones4life]

That happened to me but I kept getting error messages so apple replaced my 3G.

 

[Steve-O]

It's the fear I get every time I plug iPhone into my laptop! Holding off on updating to 3.0.1 at the mo for that reason (& also because I'm too lazy to re-jailbreak)!

 

[siddfinch]

I had a jailbroken 3G, but after dealing with the updates and re-jailbreaks, I just wiped the damn thing and left it as Apple intended. Too much hassle to baby it when jailbroken.

 

[liam27]

That's pretty strange. I just did literally the same thing. Installed the new software update (which, considering the size of it, barely seems worth it?!) - and it crashed on me. I thought I had lost everything... luckily, same as you, everything was still there.
Even all my texts, photos, settings... everything. Very thankful to Apple for having such a good restore system, because I can assure you, I cacked my pants when the software update bodged up...!!