BEWARE !!! Trying to upgrade may DELETE your Back-Ups!

[Cascadians]

Have a 3GS. Tried to upgrade. Kept getting Error -5000 Alert. On phone with AppleCare. All the way up to Senior Advisor. Been on phone for HOURS with Apple.

She had me do a manual back-up of iPhone 3GS before upgrading to iOS 5.

The back-up is GONE, DELETED. The phone is NOT upgraded to iOS 5.

All history and existence of my phone has been DELETED from iTunes on my iMac. *** Nothing remains ***

She just said this is an "EMERGING ISSUE" and all around her in North Carolina the iPhone support employees' customer's back-ups are being deleted.

My phone is destroyed. The back-ups are gone. Utterly screwed.

She said the same thing happened to her phone last night. Hello? Why did she tell me to go ahead and keep trying to upgrade? She said because she did not know it was happening to more ppl.

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It is WRONG that Apple's servers have the ability to reach into our hard drives, into iTunes, and delete our Back-Ups! !!!!!

I am beyond pissed and have no idea how to make this phone work.

How can I even tell what iOS it's on now? ??????

 

[ASakai]

This is scary. I'm about to update my both my husband's 3GS and my own. Then I see this. I don't know what to do now.

I REALLY hope they find a fix quickly for you.

 

[iphone1105]

[/COLOR]It is WRONG that Apple's servers have the ability to reach into our hard drives, into iTunes, and delete our Back-Ups! !!!!!

I am beyond pissed and have no idea how to make this phone work.

How can I even tell what iOS it's on now? ??????

They didnt do that....

 

[Cascadians]

Oh yes they did. The senior advisor said it is happening a lot now. They don't know why yet.

I'm setting up my 3GS as a new phone, only option because trying to use Time Machine to restore from a previous Back-Up results in a corrupted useless iTunes which is a humongous disaster, according to threads here.

Damn it! So frustrated. I am a long-time Apple fan and this is totally unacceptable.

She and the CPU Senior Advisor have my phone # and did not call back in the middle of this when the call was disconnected.

AARRGGGGHHHHH.

 

[SFC Archer]

My encrypted backups were deleted and those within the last 30 days. I was able to restore from a backup in April. I also got the 5000 error multiple times but did not realize it was deleting my backups. It took an additional 3 hours to restore my iPhone to what the backups would have done...total 8 hours to install and upgrade and I have been doing this since the original iDay!!! Have to say this is the worst release/update ever, however; it is only improved by the iOS 5 upgrades.

Apple...you sucked this time around and hope you learn from and correct these issues that have never happened before!

 

[Cascadians]

I tried to upgrade starting when iOS 5 became available. Kept getting this Error Alert:

"An error occurred while backing up this iPhone (-5000).
Would you like to continue to update this iPhone?
Continuing will result in the loss of all contents on this iPhone."

Notice it did not say it would delete the Back-Ups!

The Senior Advisor said to manually back it up so it was all there, then to continue. But then it deleted the Back-Ups!

And then she said all around her were incoming reports of the exact same thing happening to ppl.

She got a CPU advisor and the phone as we were just starting to try to figure out what to do and the call disconnected.

 

[Patriot24]

Oh yes they did. The senior advisor said it is happening a lot now. They don't know why yet.

I understand that you are frustrated with the situation, but there is no malicious intent on Apple's part here. It is a technical issue that they will have to look into and resolve.

No one is trying to reach into your harddrive and delete your backup.

No offense to the folks that you have been interaction with on the phone, but they shouldn't be making wild guesses about the nature of the issue when they clearly have no idea. This is exactly how widespread misinformation propagates.

 

[Cascadians]

iTunes is on my hard drive. Apple's upgrade servers DELETED my iPhone back-ups. They DELETED all trace of existence of my iPhone on my iMac's hard drive. Years of tweaking and arranging and customization and photos -- GONE.

 

[iphone1105]

iTunes is on my hard drive. Apple's upgrade servers DELETED my iPhone back-ups. They DELETED all trace of existence of my iPhone on my iMac's hard drive. Years of tweaking and arranging and customization and photos -- GONE.

No, they didnt reach into your harddrive and delete your backups, that occured when YOU were trying to back up before upgrading. They didnt log into your pc, find your backups and delete them. Sorry just didnt happen. It happens when you backup your phone, old ones get deleted for room or because they're more current.

 

[Cascadians]

No, I upgraded manually BEFORE trying to upgrade and checked iTunes Preferences to be sure the upgrade was there. It was. Trying to upgrade DELETED all back-ups. They're gone.

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Both Senior Advisors said the upgrade is NOT supposed to delete the Back-Ups!

They do not know why it is happening, or didn't as of 3/p today.

They said ppl are very upset.

 

[Night Spring]

No, I upgraded manually BEFORE trying to upgrade and checked iTunes Preferences to be sure the upgrade was there. It was. Trying to upgrade DELETED all back-ups. They're gone.

It sounds like a bug in the way iTunes is backing up / upgrading the iPhone. Yes, it's a serious problem, but no, it's not like Apple's servers are deleting stuff off your computer. The deleting is happening locally, by programs that are ON YOUR COMPUTER.

 

[msb3079]

I've had tons of issues with mine since updating.. but luckily did not lose backups (even though it said they were corrupted... so hmm.. maybe i did??)... but i still have all my data ON the phone...

anyway.. this goes to show, another reason why you should have things backed up elsewhere. I have things backed up with Time Machine on an external HDD.

 

[Cascadians]

No, they both said it is coming from their servers.

My back-ups have never been deleted before.

I can't believe they did not call back.

They said it was very busy there, lots of new issues.

As freaked out as I am, at least I'm not one of them right now.

The iPhone Senior Advisor's iPhone was bricked last night, same error. She said she has a PC and no Time Machine, lost everything.

 

[DalesWife]

I had issues when upgrading my 3gs to ios5 (my husbands worked fine). My music and videos are now on iTunes but not on my phone, while my apps, contacts, notes, etc are on my phone but not in my iphone. My dilemma is that when I receive my 4s next week in the mail and sync - what will happen? To me, my contacts are BY FAR my most valued information on my phone, followed quickly by an app which houses passwords and other sensitive information. My music I can always re-download.

While I should be EXCITED to receive my 4s in the mail, I spent today DREADING it for fear of losing my contacts information. However, I did find an awesome FREE app that backed up my information by sending it to my email as a v-card (not even sure what that is?). All I know is it's a small attachment, and if I do lose my contacts all I need to do is tap the attachment and they're loaded back into my new phone. ::sigh of relief::

I won't post the name of the apps here as I don't know the rules - I have no vested interest in any of them. I'm just happy to have some of the worry gone - and know that if my information is lost at least I can get my contacts (which means my business, my money) back. If anyone would like the name of the app, private message me, or let me know that it's ok to post it in this thread.

 

[Rob9874]

Is this isolated to 3GS's? My 4 upgraded fine, my brother's 3GS had this issue.

 

[kfergiez]

So let me get this straight. You have an iPhone, you backed it up, then your backup got deleted right? I'm sorry, but the only thing that is stored in MY backup files are settings and whatnot. All of my pictures, contacts, programs, and other sensitive information is on my hard drive. So if I lost a backup, all I have to do is set up my iPhone, put my contacts, pictures, programs, and other stuff back on the phone and arrange it. An hour at most.

You've made up your mind that Apple screwed you over and you're pissed. I understand that, but holy crap, maybe you shouldn't keep 'years' of such sensitive information on a mobile device.

 

[sk1wbw]

I blame George Bush.

 

[Cascadians]

All of my iPhone's backups got deleted, and all connections to this phone on my iMac got deleted. In addition at the moment one of my speaker systems on AirPlay connected via Airport Express got deleted.

The Apple Senior Advisor is back on the phone with me (she called back after a couple hours, whew) and said an engineer will be contacting me. They do not know why this is happening but I am not the only one.

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Speakers on airport express reconnected and showed up again after restarting everything. Connection snafus from upgrading.

I am able to add things back to this iPhone 3GS via iTunes syncing, but all settings, arrangements, tweakings and photos are gone. Will have to learn how to sync back to the iPhone from iPhoto. Of course I ported all iPhone photos each day to iPhoto on my iMac so those aren't lost.

An hour? If only! Nothing is working on iCloud with this phone at the moment.

The deletion of all record of the iPhone and all backups is NOT supposed to happen according to the 4 senior advisors I've spoken to thus far today.

 

[freedevil]

Time machine to the rescue, iPhone 4 it happened to me with the GM.

 

[JRoDDz]

Time Machine is your friend.

 

[NewYorkRanger]

This happened to me. Lost my iPad backup. Just gave up and started over.

 

[RafaelT]

Cascadians, you are 100% correct that iTunes should not have deleted your backups. It was iTunes that deleted your backups do to some sort of bug though... NOT Apples servers, regardless of what you were told by the reps you talked to.

In terms of your time machine backups... did you try and restore iTunes? If so, that was NOT what you needed to do. You need to restore the iPhone backup data. If you close iTunes, restore the iPhone backup data located in "/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup" then you should have your backups back.

 

[CrAkD]

Years of "tweaking" really? There ain't that many settings to tweak.

 

[RafaelT]

Years of "tweaking" really? There ain't that many settings to tweak.

lol, I missed that one.. Seriously though, I can fully customize the settings on a set up as new phone in about 3 minutes.