iOS4 restore does not keep app folders

This does NOT work for me. I followed the instructions to the letter, paying attention to all of the other things pointed out in this thread. I just cannot seem to get a complete restoration and organization on my new iPad like my iPad 2. Why is this so Byzantine and complex? Its stupid. I had ZERO problems doing ONE backup on my Original iPad and then doing ONE round of restoring it to the iPad 2 when I got it a hear ago. I've been at this for the last three days! I also get that stupid "this iPad is synced to another iTunes library...erase and sync?" notice....AFTER I've completely 100% uninstalled and removed all traces of iTunes, etc and reinstalled. All I want to do is duplicate my new iPad like my iPad 2, though I'm keeping the latter as well.

Hi Podisc,

first of all, you didn't mention what you tried already, did you already follow my steps from an earlier posts or some of the other steps that others have posted as well?

second, I've noticed that it makes things MUCH easier if both devices have the SAME iOS, so, make sure you update your ipad 2 to iOS 5.1 then do another backup.

then, restore your ipad 3 from the ipad 2 backup

report back and let me know what happens

Saul

It works exactly the way you said and you have saved me hours and hours of work. thanks!

Massive thank you to JPBOSS for your posting almost 2 years ago (minus four days) on page one. That makes perfect sense. That explains it perfectly.

Actually, consistent with this theory, this is why sometimes it remembers one or two folders that contain built-in apps - because they are present when it attempts to do the folders, so it can create them un-empty.

As an ACMT & network tech, I'm embarassed not to have spotted it. It's simply because this backup originlated in iOS 3 on an iPad 1 nearly 10 iPads ago and through another major bug where it kept crashing due to mail. I was a little focused on accumulated grime for data so old.

I've spent countless hours remaking my folders, restarting so they all shuffle down (too many to fit) and so on. I was about to delve into my gigabytes of countless iOS backups, pull one so that the backup I had was brand new thinking that was the problem.

My mobile apps folder contains 1245 items. Obviously I don't install 1200 apps, but I do install many, too many to see more than the beginning of unless they're in folders.

Let's see if it works this time - that makes too much sense not to be the right answer.

Eqt' list:

iOS5.1.1:

Retina iPad (64/wh/4G) iPad 2 (64/wh/3G) iPad 2 (16/Bl/Wi) iPhone 4S (32/Bl)

10.8.1 S:

iMac Mid 2010 (27" i5-2.8 QCX, 3Tb/8Gb/120Gb SSD) MacBook Air 2010 11" (2Gb 64Gb)

10.47.4 S:

Mac Mini Server Mid 2011 (i7QCX 4Gb 2x500Gb + Thunderbolt eSATA total 15Tb) MacBook Pro 17" C2D (3Gb 500Gb)

10.6.8 S:

Mac Mini C2D (3Gb 320Gb) iPods (6)

..and then there's... nevermind.

should we thank apple for that? after all these years and all similar the same iphones pretty much and the troublesome and vague itunes, i wonder what itune developers really do!

I have owned around 10 iphones including my current iphone 5 and every single time i restore from backup after OS update, i loose all organized folders for apps and I have nearly 100 apps and every single bloody freakin time i have to organize and create folders again, and guess what? if you have many pages of apps like that try to drag apps from the last page to other pages in folders every single time for each app.

If I was in charge of apple softwares and supervise and and handle approvals, apple would be heaps more successful than the current developers they have at the moment.

iTuines is the most disgusting software for backing up and restoring data for apple iphones, its all complicated.

from transferring music to restoring apps.

my new iphone 5 which have been restored more than 5 times to get the apps restored all sorted, every single bloody time it shuts down and wont restart unless I do a hard reset by pressing the home and power button.

is that all apple could do with its iphone 5?

I know for sure that it is time for me after finishing my contract, to move to samsung galaxy series 3.

apple should change its itunes to make it simpler and more appropriate. every single time i had to use itunes i had to suffer frustration and most of my phones would go corrupt after os update and had to do it several times to get it working. not only on one computer so dont blame the computer, but on several computers...

would have been great if there was people in this cruel world who would actually care rather than keep thinking about their pockets and huge profits...i guess maybe when we all die, next generation of apple developers are in fact in possession of more brain and are truely smart not like their current developers, only designing from their point of view not what people need.

this issue has been going on for the past few years and on every forum people are bringing it up and years after years noone in apple team gives a **** about it and never gonna fix it.

as long as they sell and make their profit thats what they care about....

their hardware designers are awesome and doing a great job, but their software designers especially itunes developers really suck.

thats my feedback after being a loyal customer and fan of apple and this is what I get, in fact we all get...

itunes is a torture to use.

i ended up doing the apps one by one and while transferring some would get stuck and werent transferring meanwhile no cross at the top left to delete. had to restart the phone and it was all fine then...and this is on brand new iPhone 5 btw...ridiculous!

I wont be buying/signing contracts on apple iphone anymore once this contract is finished. no wonder why samsung galaxy s3 is mor epowerful, better and more popular than iphone 4/4s or 5 by far. made a mistake renewing my contract with iphone 5...i'll see how i go with it might sell it off and buy a samsung then...

don't blame me for my feedback, blame apple because I am not the only one keep getting disappointed with apple...

This may have already been addressed, but does this fix also apply to Internet shortcuts as well that are in folders on the home screen? Does this fix mirror the exact set up for all my apps and shortcuts and where I have them on each page of my home screen? I am so glad you figured out how to do this.

This BIG problem exsited for many years actually got fixed in iTunes 11, when you restore a backup using iTunes 11, it restores folders and apps at the first time just like what you see when restoring backup from iCloud. FINALLY !!!

That has not been the case for me. I've restored with iTunes 11 and all my apps and shortcuts end up scattered on my phone.

Well it's over 4 years since the original post, and Apple still has not fixed this bug. I can confirm it still exists, restoring from iTunes backup in iTunes 12 (Yosemite) to iPad Air 2 (iOS 8). I wonder how many poor frustrated souls have spent hours manually reorganising all their apps because Apple hasn't bothered to fix the way an iTunes restore works (presumably their attention is on iCloud now)!

I can also confirm that JPBOSS's solution does work. It needs to be selected as the solution so it's easier for other people with the same problem to find it. Here it is again:

JPBOSS wrote:

Actually I have found what causes it and the remedy.

When you are restoring the iPhone from backup, it attempts to restore folders first. Well, the problem with this is that the Apps are not there/restored yet so none of the folders are allowed to be created empty.

The remedy to this is, do your restore from backup which will restore all of your apps, etc. then immediately do another restore and your folders should be there. They were in my case. Don't sync between the two restores either.

Some additional info…

The first restore (for a new device) is like a full restore that wipes your device and then loads it up again with your app data and settings. In my experience, the first restore did NOT actually restore any apps to the device, even though they were all in iTunes. I had to then choose 'Sync' (or 'Apply') for it to do do this. That's when the weirdness really starts. In iTunes, it previewed the apps on my device in the same order they appear in the left side bar, but when they downloaded to the iPad, the order was different again. I couldn't work out the logic at all. In any case, neither arrangement resembled anything close to the way I had my apps organised before the iPad was backed up.

So as JPBOSS says, you need to do a second restore. In iTunes 12, go to the 'Summary' settings screen under your device name. IMPORTANT: Don't press the 'Restore iPad…' or 'Restore iPhone…' button in the top grey box. You don't want to wipe the apps that you just synced to your device. For the second restore, choose the 'Restore Backup…' button in the second grey box. Then choose the same backup you restored from the first time. After this, my apps were finally restored to their original order (aside from a whole bunch of new apps at the end, because 'Automatically install new apps' was ticked.)

One more thing… It's probably not a bad idea to archive your original backup as the very first step, so it's always there if things go wrong. I once had an iTunes backup fail, but when I tried to restore again, I discovered to my horror that iTunes had deleted the original backup and replaced it with a new, and completely useless one! You can archive a device backup in 'Preferences > Devices'. Right click on the backup and choose 'Archive'. Or you could always click 'Show in Finder' and then copy it to another folder manually.