Apple iOS update woes
I don't post often in LJ, but today's situation deserves recording for posterity. Yesterday I tried to buy a couple of apps and got told I needed to update my iOS. So I booted into Windows 10 to use iTunes, one of the only two programs I run on that benighted OS (the other is a scanner driver). I backed up my iPad, then my iPhone, then did the update. After the update, I discovered that my diary app has stopped working, and the company that made it no longer exist.
This wasn't just a small inconvenience, this was catastrophic. That diary had everything I've planned for the next six years (it went up to 2024, although I think it was just birthdays past about 2020). I really liked that app - I could write or type in it, it was easy to use and - I thought - safe, since I could back it up. And I did still have the backups, I just couldn't use them. And of course, Apple wouldn't let me reinstall the older iOS. I tried restoring from backup, but something went horribly wrong and my iPad started restoring from my iPhone backup - which meant not only did I not have my diary app, I didn't have a load of other data, including my conference notes on Notability, which are really important. Serge tried using iTunes on his little Mac to restore, but got the same error.
By this time it was about 2am, and we tried to get some sleep, but that didn't work. Serge went back to messing with the various backups, trying to work out what had gone wrong, and I did some stuff which needed doing but didn't require much brainpower. And during the process of looking at backups and trying to work out what was going on, we found an alternative backup on our network drive, made last week, which iTunes hadn't had a chance to mess with, and after one more factory reset and two restores, my iPad came back! (We got to sleep around 4:30am, FWIW).
That was, just on its own, a huge relief. I haven't lost much since apparently I didn't do much over the past week (!), and my conference notes are all intact. But today, while I was sorting things out, doing the washing, cleaning the fish tank, messing with floorboards - Serge delved into my backup, put some more recent data on top, and recovered my diary. He recovered all my data! All of it, including the edits I made just before the disastrous iOS update! He's made it readable in a browser, so I can populate a new diary app (preferably one with active support and an export function)! My husband is a genius.
I meant to spend this weekend doing house stuff and drawing, and instead I had a horrible IT failure which was almost entirely my own fault and wasted hours and hours of my time and Serge's. On the bright side, thanks to Serge I do still have all my important data, and I have been reminded never to trust any computer which I don't fully control (see my comments re Win 10 above). And it's amazing how much flooring you can lay while waiting for data recovery. But mainly, I'm posting this because Serge is amazing and deserves much kudos for data wrangling :)
This wasn't just a small inconvenience, this was catastrophic. That diary had everything I've planned for the next six years (it went up to 2024, although I think it was just birthdays past about 2020). I really liked that app - I could write or type in it, it was easy to use and - I thought - safe, since I could back it up. And I did still have the backups, I just couldn't use them. And of course, Apple wouldn't let me reinstall the older iOS. I tried restoring from backup, but something went horribly wrong and my iPad started restoring from my iPhone backup - which meant not only did I not have my diary app, I didn't have a load of other data, including my conference notes on Notability, which are really important. Serge tried using iTunes on his little Mac to restore, but got the same error.
By this time it was about 2am, and we tried to get some sleep, but that didn't work. Serge went back to messing with the various backups, trying to work out what had gone wrong, and I did some stuff which needed doing but didn't require much brainpower. And during the process of looking at backups and trying to work out what was going on, we found an alternative backup on our network drive, made last week, which iTunes hadn't had a chance to mess with, and after one more factory reset and two restores, my iPad came back! (We got to sleep around 4:30am, FWIW).
That was, just on its own, a huge relief. I haven't lost much since apparently I didn't do much over the past week (!), and my conference notes are all intact. But today, while I was sorting things out, doing the washing, cleaning the fish tank, messing with floorboards - Serge delved into my backup, put some more recent data on top, and recovered my diary. He recovered all my data! All of it, including the edits I made just before the disastrous iOS update! He's made it readable in a browser, so I can populate a new diary app (preferably one with active support and an export function)! My husband is a genius.
I meant to spend this weekend doing house stuff and drawing, and instead I had a horrible IT failure which was almost entirely my own fault and wasted hours and hours of my time and Serge's. On the bright side, thanks to Serge I do still have all my important data, and I have been reminded never to trust any computer which I don't fully control (see my comments re Win 10 above). And it's amazing how much flooring you can lay while waiting for data recovery. But mainly, I'm posting this because Serge is amazing and deserves much kudos for data wrangling :)