An error occurred while restoring this iPhone (-34)

Same boat, only difference is that mine has (-1) at the end.

I'm getting this same error... I cannot find any information online to help!!

Same thing , An error occurred while restoring this iPhone (-34). lost some irreplacable videos , photos of my daughter and family. maximum frustration !!!! please help

Same here too. I have been attemped a half dozen times but no luck:(

I got the same error (-34) but since your phone will have backed up the data you won't lose your photos etc.

Use this app to restore your data:

http://supercrazyawesome.com/

Run it, choose the backup date (probably the latest), and then scroll down and select OS data at the end. It will extract all the photos and videos etc.

Your videos, photos and data are not completley lost. iTune would have made a backup before installing the update, which you can fall back to again by restoring to the backup.

This is a mess. Error -34 means, out of disk space. In my case I think it happened because I had previously told iTunes to compress all my music to 128Kbps in order to fit it on my 32GB 3GS phone. When restoring everything from backup after the 5.0 upgrade, it seemed to lose sight of that switch and therefore reported too little space into which to restore.

That's the theory anyhow.

I found this earlier thread that (seems to have) solved my problem: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2469676?start=0&tstart=0

Following these instructions is a bit of a leap of faith, because factory-restoring your phone as they recommend wipes it. But if you do like they say and make a copy of your backups elsewhere, you can't be any worse off than you are right now. Following the restore described above, it gave me the option of setting it up new or restoring from a backup. I picked the backup just prior to my 5.0 upgrade. iTunes completed the initial restore-from-backup process and then, rather than try to fill the phone from the backup, just quit and left me to do so as an ordinary sync - but with all my old settings in place, so that all the old stuff would sync as usual. It will be several hours before I can look to see if everything in fact came through okay - I'd most like to see the old e-mails and text messages back in place, as well as Apps where I expect them - and will report on it in the morning. But this is the furthest I've gotten in the process thus far and I'm encouraged.

I believe John is correct here. I had the 128 setting also.

In my case, when everything was done, I continued with the instructions on the iPhone itself. Then I clicked in iTunes 'restore from backup' chose the latest one. Voila everything came back except music which it's now doing.

I'm guessing the issue is that the iPhone is getting filled midway through the process and you get -34. But if you do restore from backup then the music is deleted, and the space is then there, and the music is added after the whole process which doesn't cause a problem should at this point the iPhone becomes full.

If you want to start from scratch, consider unclicking the 'sync music' from the options. Then do that sync later.

I tries several times too. I noticed that every time I clicked on the iTunes to see how far I was going on the restoring it would collapse. So I left it restoring and went to do some typing on word. I noticed that It was going further than it ever did. Might not have NOTHING to do with anything but after trying all the troubleshooting (even calling linksys to update my router) the only thing that made my iTunes not give me an error message was leaving it doing it's work as a non active page. mean, Go to facebook and let it to it's thing.. worked for me.

I had the exact same issue. I was using the 128 setting also. It got most of the way through the sync but then would always error out. I'm hoping everything else came through ok. I'm syncing all of my music/photos/videos right now and it takes a LONG time.

Guys....I got the same message when I upgraded my iPhone 4 to OS 5. It was about 4:20pm NYC time. I had done a complete backup before, new iTunes 10.5.....I got the same blank phone. I flipped. Because I live in NYC and have 4 Apple Store to book a Genius appointment with, I did so at the 5th Avenue Store. When I arrived an hour later, the check in Dude, said that all the iPhone updaters were experiencing the same thing, and there was a parade of appointments. The reason? Server overload. That's all. Dude told me to try the process again a couple of hours later. I did so at 9pm NYC time, and all went well. Everything backed up, iOS 5 installed.

No, it's a local problem. iTunes thinks it's been asked to put 10 gallons of music into a 5 gallon tub and when it overflows it quits. Macgruder may have hit on an explanation of why it works from a bottom-up restore.

Anyhow the good news is that nearly everything seems back in place. I lost my saved e-mails, which is too bad but okay; texts were in place, as were my camera roll photos and - most importantly, Angry Bird scores. "Game Center" seems to have forgotten who I am and is not letting me reclaim my own screen name, telling me someone else has it (hmph!) but since I had no actual friends there, it doesn't much matter.

Not sure if this helps anyone, but I had the (-1) error and I figured out a solution. Apparently, iTunes just kept timing out. I unplugged my iPhone, replugged it, and it asked if I wanted to continue restoring. I asked it to continue, and it restored more data...until it timed out again. Repeated the same process (unplug, replug, tell it to continue) until it finished everything.

I had the 128k music problem. The music was originally in FLAC and it copied to the phone at the lower rate so it fit. -34 is related to this I believe.

It seems crazy too but I fixed it but choosing 'set up new phone option' (can't rember the exact words) and then after it installed went in to the normal options and re-choose 128k and clicked sync for the other options (music, calendars, video etc).

It was all there.

If you choose all music without the 128k option then the space meter just blues out - overfull.

Phew.