Q: Updated to iOs5 lost everything! Help?

12,400 views probably says it all. Didn't lose my picures and some other misc. stuff, but lost my Apps ,Music and Fav's in Safari. Not very well thought out on Apples side. Good time to sell my shares of Apple.

I found that as IOS5 reset all my settings (it reconfigured my iTunes to "Manually sync" which I hate) on iTunes, I too had the full to capacity message. But I had to re-tick "Convert AAC to 128" (or whatever it is) again, and after that i restored and it was fine.

When I switched to iOS 5 on my iphone 4 and tried to restore my phone on a Windows XP system, I received a message that said backup file did not exist and got and error code (50).  I found my last backup before the switch in the usual file directory, C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Apple Computer\mobilesync.  In looking through some of the folders in the "Apple Computer" folder, I found in the "iTunes" folder a "Mobile Backups" folder than had inside it a folder that was titled by the serial number of my iphone.  I copied and pasted the "Backup" folder in its entirety from "mobliesync" into the folder that had my phone's serial number under iTunes\Mobile Backups.  It took about 15 minutes for the whole thing to copy, as it was large.  But once it was copied in, I again tried to restore my phone from backup and it worked.  My last backup was from two weeks prior to the switch, so I lost some photos, but everything came back up to the date of that backup.  I just had to transfer back in all of my apps.

I notice now that there is no longer a folder under iTunes\Mobile Backups, and that my backup appears to be saving to the old location.  It seems the reason my backup did not exist initially was that the system was looking in the wrong folder for the backup files. 

Note, I also had my phone at the restore to original settings mode when I got the backup to take. 

Please also note that I am not computer savvy and this was a stroke of blind luck that I figured this out.  This was last week, so maybe Apple has fixed the issue by now.  But man, was I angry until I got this "fix" to work. 

Good luck!

I downloaded it (or something similar). It shows what exactly is on your back up (how many photos, messages, contacts, etc) to make you feel sane and that it's APPLE's fault your back up is corrupt. I haven't bought it yet since I feel I will hopefully one day be able to put my stuff back on my iphone.

I got the -50 error and don't know what to do, I'm really unimpressed. "It just works"... what a laugh.

So, I've read all these comments but I still don't know what to do!!  Help!!

If you're getting -50 error, try copying your iPhone backup to another computer and running the restore from there.

I copied my back-up taking on my Windows box and copied it to my Mac and then ran restore in iTunes and it worked.

Of course the backup was still missing a bunch of data, but thats another story..

Did you unplug it while it was installing the apps?

Not so computer savy, here. Not sure how, or where, to find the iPhone back up, and how  to transfer it. Read what dkgardner wrote, but evidently not as computer literate as he is. And, what exactly, does this error message -50 represent.

Appreciate any, and all, help. Wonder wh Apple is not addressing this issue, which it seems a lot of people are having?

I had the same problem with my iPhone 3GS and here is how I fixed it:

- Open iTunes and connect the iPhone into the computer

- Click Cancel or close the dialog box

- Select the iPhone under the Devices on the left pane, and select Apps tab/page on the right pane

I found that there was an empty (gray) screen/page on my iPhone. In my case, it was screen #3 and there were a total of 6 screens. It looks like the upgrade moved the icons from the folders that I had, and somehow put them on new screens and messed them up.

- I moved one of my app icon into the empty screen; just to make it a valid one

- Click Apply, and sync the device. Voila, everything shows up again.

Hope this will help.

Good luck,

Sam

@dkgardner

It was pure guesswork. When I got the error message twice before, I had clicked 'restore' again (or whatever the middle option was) and it restarted the restore and wiped my iPhone clean.

So I decided to click delete back up and hope for the best. And it worked.

Guess my back up was corrupted!

Hope it goes ok for you

I just updated my iphone to ios5 and was horrified to see that all my pictures were lost. They had all been downloaded to iphoto on my macbook pro before I updated to ios5, but they were no longer on my iphone.

I did a couple of things, and my pics showed up - it takes a few minutes for them all to show. 

1.  First I went to settings on my phone and signed into icloud and then my pics started showing up in "events" in  Photos on the phone - I had to fish around a bit to find them, but the Photo's file was disorganized, and many of the pictures were black.

2.  Next I turned off (powered off) my phone, and when I powered it back on, voila! the pics were in camera roll in Photos.

Unfortunately for me this isn't a new thing since SJ left us - i've had to restore my 3GS to nothing every time I've tried to update the software since I got it 18 months ago.  Think i'm going to Samsung too...