The iPhone could not be updated. an unknown error occurred (14)

My wife had the same issue 2 nights ago. She woke up morning and phone was showing less storage and slow as well. She restarted and phone in constant loop. Tried recovering phone by updating but get error 14. Tried a 3rd party installer as well , still failing.

We had half data backed up in iCloud , but still lost about 3-4 months of photos.

Why can't apple provide a recovery IOS when there are problems with updating software due to storage issue.

Any update on the disk savers , if they are able to fix it ?

janesh222 wrote:

Why can't apple provide a recovery IOS when there are problems with updating software due to storage issue.

It’s 40 years into the personal computer age. Why can’t people understand that backups are essential, and are the user’s responsibility?

I sympathize with the fact that the prospect of losing your data is sub optimal, but the fact is that your data is your responsibility and yours alone. While I'll agree that it's not realistic or fair to expect you to know the amount of storage that iOS requires to properly boot, the fact is that you should be regularly backing your data regardless. Also, iOS gives you ample warnings to manage/reduce your storage usage and it's on you for not following them. Take responsibility for your data and let this be a lesson learned. It's disingenuous to complain about how important your data is/was, but it apparently wasn't important enough to backup.

You're right... I am responsible for my data and also for backing it up, so that's on me, lesson learned.

But the fact that a large amount of customers are suffering from this low storage problem could be an indicator that this is a bigger issue that could be prevented, or at least improved by Apple, and I'm not talking about backups, because that's still doesn't resolve the root problem. It would also be great if there was an alternative/fix to allow updating the phone without having to lose all the data when the device is low in storage. I am sure Apple can.

Second, you mentioned that IOS gives ample warnings to manage/reduce storage... and that I didn't follow them. In my case that couldn't be further from the truth. That's exactly the part that never happened and that I am complaining about; I never got a warning from IOS. My Macbook has always alerted/warned when I am running low in space. I wouldn't be in this sad situation if iOS would've alerted me somehow of this fact, since I had no idea I was running low in space! None of the applications or iOS warned me or even suggested to manage my storage. I know there are plenty of tools to manage your storage, but that is useless unless you keep an eye on it.

I don't know what are the scenarios in which iOS is supposed to alert the user from lack of space, as you seem to be so sure about, but this one was certainly not one of them. The only thing I did was restarted my phone. How could've I known that restarting my phone would be a cause for concern, if nothing is telling me there might be?

I’m having the exact same problem here. I did received the warning on low storage and I tried deleting photos and videos. After which, the space was not freed up at all. And I decided to reboot, which is my biggest regret now. I have iCloud backup but for some strange reasons, there’s a gap between May-Aug that wasn’t backed up.

I totally agree with what some of you said. Surely apple can come up with a fix for this? Maybe a secret buffer storage so such things won’t happen and the phones won’t jus crash and die? It’s the worst thing that can happen! I’m so ****** that they even allow users to go thru such horrible experience.

Apple pls fix this ASAP!!

Hello, I am having the same issue! Took about 12 hours to finally have the "update" downloaded (which really isn't even an update because my iPhone was already on its latest software!). Not sure what to do next.

I have the same problem!! I am so upset and freaking out! There are some very important things on my phone that I would give anything to be able to access (I thought I had them backed up but some how they aren't).

They must not have been that important to you then. If they were, you would have backed them up. As I've said previously in this thread, I sympathize the losing data is terrible and undesirable. That being said, your data is YOUR responsibility and no one else's. While error 14 isn't your fault, the fact that your data wasn't backed up is.

Here is what happened to me:

Phone was working fine. I was puring myself a glass of water. Noticed a few drops fell on to my screen. Wipe it dry (didn't take the case out).

Two hours later, phone screen was unresponsive.

I freaked and read another forum on here and it advised to plug the phone into itunes since running an update fixes most issues.

Worst decision I made. The phone went into recovery mode and it just got stuck there.

Now nothing can pull it out of there and now I am getting a code 14.

I am taking it to an apple authorized provider (Apple my the appointment for me)

At this point I am beside myself because I was the one that plugged in my phone into itunes.

I don't care about the device itself but I am deeply hopeful the photos of the early months of my daugter's life can be saved.

I know I backed up the photos up until she was four months and then I noticed there are a few more photos in icloud.com

I honestly feel cheated by apple. There should be a way to take the motherboard (or storage) and put it into a new operating phone to at least save the data.

I just can't believe that the only way to get past that recovery mode is through itunes.

Apple products aren't cheap. So, I am not happy to learn that the only way to get past the recovery mode is through itunes only. And if so, there should be a way to access data (at least photos and videos) if still turns on.

nadiargesz wrote:

Secret or reserve storage to kick in in the event something like this happens sounds like a great idea.

How much reserve storage? And what happens when it gets used up? And, of course, people would then complain that Apple wasn’t giving them all the storage they paid for.

And, BTW, iPhones have this; there is a warning dialog when storage gets low. That is the “reserve”. If you ignore it then you can still run out of storage.

A true story: Back in the 1960’s a friend had an original VW Beetle. The car did not have a gas gauge; instead it had a reserve 1 gallon “tank”. One day he ran out of gas, so he switched to the reserve and didn’t think more about it. The next day he ran out of gas.

"How much reserve storage?" However much it would take to make sure it doesn't happen. A gig, two gigs, 500 megabytes.

"And what happens when it gets used up?" If it were part of the advertised 64, 128 gigs...one terabyte, we'd still have the same problem. It has to be distinct from it. Perhaps a gig or two gets reserved as part of "system" that is in fact empty, but can't be overwritten, but is there for space when the phone boots up. Or its a separate card that the code has instructions to not access, except when booting up.

"And, of course, people would then complain that Apple wasn't giving them all the storage they paid for." Trust me, I hear that. Tell them the storage is more of a second RAM the phone will access to ensure proper boot up. Heck, make that the case. Expand the RAM, and have it empty out every time the phone shuts down, and is used for this purpose.

I take the point with the car, but that doesn't mean you don't put in the reserve tank (for a lot of people, that would solve the problem), or make it a hybrid, or solar, as we get the tech for those. If it would solve 50% of the cases, even 10%, that would be an improvement.

I'm not sure if this is the right platform to post this on, but figured I'd ask here. A bit of background: I had an iPhone 8 that in October 2020 got error code 14. At the time, my iCloud was only updated through Oct 2019, so my photos from Oct 2019-Oct 2020 are on the bricked phone. In November, I purchased a new phone, iPhone SE 2nd generation, and set it up with a recent backup I had.

Yesterday, I went to look back at my photos for something I was looking for in June/July 2019, and I realize that I am missing about 3-4 weeks of photos during that time frame. I have all my other photos from 2019, and as mentioned, it was from Oct forward that wasn't backed up to the iCloud.

Would anyone happen to have any insight into what could have happened? I'm curious if this has occured to anyone else. Not sure if error code 14 corrupted something - just odd to me that I'm missing weeks worth of photos when those photos were backed up to iCloud along with others from 2019. Thank you!

So Apple is responsible because users don’t bother to use any of the FREE backup and sync options for iPhones that Apple offers? Whatever happened to personal responsibility? Or is that a thing of the last millennium?

So creating a software/hardware design with a major defect like this;

• Root file-system partition size was set too small in the ramdisk's options plist, or the root filesystem size somehow exceeds the storage capacity of the device ("not enough space in /dev/disk0s1 to restore" according to ASR)

Is perfectly fine to you? Wow, great! Ok.

Some people even gets this error during a backup process so both their backup and device fail. Not always personal responsibility. So stop it.

You keep attacking the people under all error 14 titles constantly, which not makes sense. You are not helping. Please stop.

We the people suffering from this, asking for a solution. We don’t need to be harassed people like you.

We are already desperately sorry.

There are a lot of things Apple can do to help us.

I truly hope that it is true, so I will now just wait. All my memories are on the phone. A lesson learnt.