I have an iPhone XS Max 512 G. I love photos and videos and have 2 very young kids and captured their most treasured moments. Because I was worried iCloud backup would take forever an it's a large phone with a lot of data and since iCloud doesn't keep things that are off your phone, I decided to go the route of periodically just taking things off the phone and putting it on an external hard drive (and having a back up external hard drive as well). I tried unsuccessfully to take things off my phone 2 weeks ago since I was getting messages about it being close to full but it kept working (texts, emails, apps all worked fine). Then 3 days ago some of the apps weren't working and my many Safari tabs were all closed but I checked and all of my videos and photos were there, so I restarted my phone and it never fully came back on - just the black screen w the white Apple logo. After 3 hours w Apple and trying to update the software (it downloaded 4.9G of something and gets to the progress bar each time with a speck of progress) it then stops and says "The iPhone "iPhone" could not be updated. An unknown error occurred (47)." Now I'm left with the screen either with the black background and white Apple logo or the black screen with the white link to support.apple.com/iphone/restore at the top. Apple says perhaps I need the new iOS and yet may not have enough room for it on the phone which leaves me in a pickle. I have NOT done a restore of the phone so my data should all be on there. I so desperately want my photos and videos back. I would do anything for them. Apple recommended I send my phone to Ontrack.com data recovery specialists. I plan to send my phone to Ontrack.com ASAP unless anyone has better suggestions. Anyone had success with retrieving photos and videos from this state? Any tips? From the above link it looks like the "(47)" error maybe a hardware issue which I'm hoping Ontrack.com will be able to fix (not sure how the hardware being the issue relates to the memory being full which is what Apple told me was the issues -- though I typically have NOT had great customer service experience with Apple so don't know what to believe from Apple support people). This whole experience has been devastating and making me more paranoid about back ups no matter how it's done. Anyone have any suggestions for retrieving my photos and videos?
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Need urgent help retrieving photos and videos from iPhone XS Max with an Error (47) message
- Thread starter Jen52081
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Thank you. I will literally do anything to get my photos and videos back.
Is there any advice you can give us so that we don’t get into this issue perhaps ?
Your data is unretrievable. Everything stored on your phone is encrypted and even if the chip is removed from the logic board and mounted in a reader the information will be gibberish. Running an iphone to it's storage limit is known to cause serious problems that can only be remedied by a full delete and restore of the device. Backing up and off loading the data before it becomes an issue is critical if you want to avoid problems like this... Error 14 is another issue that is output when storage is full and a device is locked into a boot loop...
Any luck Jen52081? Did you end up send this to Ontrack? I have the same exact issue with photos and videos.
[automerge]1595881948[/automerge]
[automerge]1595881948[/automerge]
Any luck Jen52081? Did you end up send this to Ontrack? I have the same exact issue with photos and videos.
I am so sorry to hear that you are having the same situation. It truly is devastating. I sent my phone to Ontrack.com and they said that presently there is nothing that can be done but they are hoping for a fix/patch to be made in iOS 14 to be released in September (this problem has been occurring mainly since March 2020 and now Ontrack.com gets 15-20 calls per day with customers in the same predicament). Ontrack.com is holding onto my phone for the time being to work on it as they hear back from Apple. The thing you should do is to post to Apple Discussion threads requesting that they make a change. Please post your story and a request that Apple fix this problem ASAP to this thread: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251208404?login=true&page=4
While I got Error (47), it seems to be the exact same problem as Error (14) for which presently there is no fix. Also see this YouTube video for another company in addition to Ontrack.com who is trying to solve the problem--this lady sums up our challenge exactly; we take such good care of our phones - no drops, no theft, no water damage--just one day the phone stops working and there is no warning about the storage being full causing a major data corruption to the point we are unable to retrieve our data. It is infuriating and heartbreaking and an indictment on Apple:
Please Tim make your voice be heard to Apple by posting on the above thread. I can send you other Apple discussion threads I've posted on that you can post your story on as well. I pray that Apple actually reads and pays attention to our feedback and makes a fix for Errors (47) and Error (14) -- Apple has complete power to help us.