iPhone upgrade warning....

Happy Holiday's everyone!

So I spent my holiday in a frantic trying to recover the data from a failed update. Apparently you can't migrate your data from iPhone OS 1.1.1 to 3.1.3 . iTunes doesn't tell you this and all the internet searches say "It's easy." NO it's not. Not sure if it's Apple propaganda or not. Good luck getting support for an out of warranty Apple device.

The firmware update happend flawlessly. The phone came back and booted into the home screen. Then it said to restore the data. After that the phone stayed on the Apple logo and the status bar never moves.

An update without the users data is useless...

BUT! I have a fix and managed to learn a few things...

1. BACK UP! Always back up before you perform any upgrade or update!

2. Apple sucks for backwards compatibility. They REALLY aren't backward compatible friendly. If the device is "Out of scope" it's just not supported. Like 64-bit on older iMacs that have a 64-bit processor, but due to a bios lock you can't run Snow Leopard in 64bit mode. WHY?? Oh, that's right. I have to buy a new iMac because the one that's only 3 years old isn't supported. End of life...

3. It's NOT easy locating Apple fixes in online searches. I pull up A LOT of pages telling you how to do it. Not many, when it fails and it does fail.

4. Apple.com support KB's sucks even more. Their searches are almost useless.

So, how did I recover?

1. Look for where your back up is stored. The file names won't look like anything you know. I had to go by the date and time it was modified. Copy the entire folder to a USB drive or other locations. DO NOT use the original files. You may need to go back to them.

On a Mac: ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/
On Windows XP: \Documents and Settings\(username)\Application Data\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup\
On Windows Vista and Windows 7: \Users\(username)\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup\

2. I located an app. http://www.iphonebackupextractor.com/ It saved my life for $25.

3. I extracted the data from the files and there is no easy way to get the files back on the phone. EXCEPT... to export the Contacts as CSV files and Calendar as iCal file.

Both Hotmail and Gmail support Active Sync. I suggest importing them into those mail clients and use Active Sync to get your mail. This will also provide an online back up for all your contacts so in the future something like this won't be a disaster.

I hope this helps.