iPhone iOS 5 restore error -34

Thanks, pro bowler & bladibla. This worked for me as well. It was quite scary to click that button that said "delete backup," but it seems to have worked.

Here's what I did:

1) When I got the error message, it asked if I wanted to cancel, continue or delete backup.

2) I clicked delete backup (& proceeded to sweat buckets)

3) iTunes took me back to the start page of the iPhone, so I clicked "restore" as if I was going to start fresh.

4) iTunes and the phone started doing its thing, but somewhere in the midst of it, it started syncing.

5) In the middle of the syncing, I got a message asking if I wanted to proceed with restore or continue syncing. I chose "continue syncing" (or whatever the NOT restore button was)

6) it continued syncing like normal and all appears to be well. It's now copying my music and has already synced my apps.

So, if you don't see me on this board again, that's me sorted.

Would never have figured it our nor would I have had the guts to click 'delete backup' without the help of you guys. Thanks!!

I was having the very same issue as you guys, and followed the exact steps described by Pro bowler, but it didn't fix it. Actually got worse. Now i have an ios5 phone that is completely empty (no apps, music, settings) and when i connect to itunes, it only offers me to restore with an "unknown" backup from 2000. I am not seeing the backup i took before ios5 upgrade procedure started.

any advice?

Grrr.

I'm having the same problem.

In theory it would seem the method above simply wipes the phone and re-syncs with movies, apps, and and so on from your computer. This is very different from restoring the phone's local data/setting.

For me losing the data is a big deal, also I didn't sync anything but managed everything manually. My pictures were backed up so I'm not worried about that, and I can always redownload apps and music, but I'm worried about missing all the individual app settings (I have hundreds) and local data.

Has anyone confirmed that the above method actually restores from the backup?

My theory about all is is that the new OS is bigger than the old one and that those of us with nearly full phones are getting hosed. So I guess the second question is: is there any way to edit down the backup and remove certain classes of data... my guess is that's it's all encrypted and this is impossible.

rg

'Delete backup' seems to mean deleting the partial backup from the phone, and not from iTunes. This misunderstanding is why it looks so scary.

The steps by pro bowler worked for me; I got the error, hit 'Delete backup', got an empty iPhone, which immediately tried to sync, clicked 'Restore', it restored my data, and after that it synced everything. I haven't lost anything - I'm just disappointed my favourite ebook reader (Stanza) does not work under iOS 5.

Incidentally the cause of the error seems to be a bug in iTunes. You will get it if you have a music library that is too big to fit on your phone without on-the-fly downconversion to 128Kbps; iTunes seems to forget about this setting when upgrading to iOS5 and restoring.

I followed pro bowler's advice (thanks!) and then synced immediately after the restore. My phone was restored exactly with the application data and settings from my last backup (which was a few days ago, since I rather foolishly forgot to backup before updating the iOS) as well as my music, apps, etc. The only thing that went wrong was that all my contacts vanished, but I was able to make them reappear with some help from google.

I got error -34 from iTunes when it seemed like my iPhone was near the end of the update. After retrying a few times without disconnecting the phone, the last time I got error -34 I did the following and it worked fine:

1. Unplugged the phone from my computer

2. The phone went through the iOS 5 setup wizard with no problems. Once the phone was set up, my old apps were already there and my phone already was set up with its old email accounts, etc.

3. Plugged the phone back into iTunes, when it asked if I wanted to restore it from backup I said No (Delete the backup).

4. Synced the phone to copy back all photos and songs.

I have 8 different restore dates...if i go thru this process will i be able to restore settings/contacts from one of those? I have ios5 setup on my 3gs but not of my restore attempts are working...i'm doing another firmware restore to see if I can do the process you said. it wont delete my different restore sessions will it?

Update.

I have a method to update that works, but it's ugly & time consuming.

1. Backup an iOS4 phone with the same amount of space as the phone having problems.

2. Restore your old backup onto that iOS4 phone

3. Edit down the content to leave a few more gigs of space.

4. Archive ie make a new backup.

5. Take that backup and restore to the iOS 5 phone.

6. now restore the iOS4 phone with rht right restore file.

Ugly but it works.

Also in the course of doing all this, I discovere that even though my iOS5 phone had no apps music or videos, all my photos were preserved and my user data was preserved. I could just redownload all the apps/music/video and everything semmed fine. The only issue is downloading the "lost" apps is super tedious. Especially w/ 200+ apps

That makes sense. I dont have any other iDevices so I'm trying to use my friends ipod touch that had the same amount of storage but I'm not sure how to get my iPhone backup restored (or rather stored in this case) to Ipod

Me too! thank you so much, Pro Bowler. I got the -34 error near the end of my restore and the only thing I had not recovered was my photos. I tried Delete Backup and it almost instantly gave me back my photos. But I did notice that the music takes up A LOT MORE SPACE than it did with iOS4.

Thanks again

Hi all - got this error message while updating last night and ended up disconnecting and shutting down. I was able to update to iOS5 and install iCloud. Pretty much everything was restored - EXCEPT my music (~25GB). Any ideas on how to restore from my iPhone backup now that it's a day later and I've disconnected from the update? My only option on the summary page when I connect my phone is to restore to factory settings, but I don't want that, right?

Pro Bowler, Perhaps you can help find a solution to my phone, I think i slept on my phone and eventually a call came through, And it showed a static apple screen and dint go off, I tried to restore, but it never completes, error 1603... Dunno what steps to take? it doesnt even come on, unless i put it in my laptop, doesnt show the charging sign

go through the link . ur prob shld get solved http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3125

I am having the same problem.

I am having the same problem.