Help! iPhone wiped after update!!

Welcome to the discussions,
contacts, photos and events should also be saved on your computer address book, photo folder and calendar program or similar places.
If you included the backup folder in your computer backup, you should be able to restore it again by replacing the existing one. Here's where it is located:
Windows Vista and Windows 7: \Users\(username)\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup\
copied from: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1766
If you don't have a backup of that folder, your information is lost.

This has happened to my wife today as well. Right clicked phone in iTunes menu and restore from backup but alas to no avail - all contacts, messages, calendar etc wiped. Not a happy puppy.

My iphone remains unaffected, bizarrely...

similar situation. ipad function says its empty yet when connected to itunes show 188 songs in memory. Just had a few of the 1969 messages come in, wonder if they are connected

I just updated as well to 4.0.1. I backed up my data before I updated, but the update completely wiped my iPhone 3G. Now iTunes won't recognise the backup file? It only displays the automatic back up made after the update! I lost 3 yrs of data.

Is there a manual way (ie not using iTunes) to restore an iPhone from a backup file?

This needs a fix immediately, or I may as well switch to a Droid 😟

I have the same problem. I am afraid to try anything on my own at this point. I recently upgraded to OS 4 and lost everything except the apps. Who cares about the apps? They can be reinstalled anyway. Lost are all my contacts, photos, itunes info and settings. I tried to restore, but it said there was no back up even though it was backed up prior to the upgrade....the first time it errored, but the second time the sync stayed viable until the back up was finished at which time the new OS was installed. It did show a back up from May 2009?, but I didn't see a way to use it. It has synced so many times since then and I have backed it up since, but even restore of contacts to 2009 would be beneficial, but I want my photos and everything else back. There has to be a way.

@JanDuncan1058
Try backup extractor: http://supercrazyawesome.com . Extract the iOS files to a new folder, go to Media/DCIM/xxxApple/ and hopefully find some jpg files. It worked for me, I just tried.

Mine did the same on the same update. what the heck?! I lost some killer photos and all my notes which had important to do lists, books to read, goals, etc. Any chance those notes are retrievable if it was not specifically set to sync?

I'm looking at the span of time from when this issued was first post to comments still being posted, wow, long time!...and feel lucky that I haven't had any issues at all...i have version 4.0.2 so i'm hoping that all the 4.0.1 users recovered their data or found resolve with the 4.0.2 update or even the 4.1 update. at the time I updated the my iPhone OS to 4.0.2 I was (and still am) using Windows 7.

Message was edited by: MengLi