Last night I decided to backup my daughter’s iPad to iTunes on my Mac, something I do from time to time. (I don’t use iCloud Backup on my own devices because I’d rather have the backup of the confidential data on my devices live on my home computer rather than Apple’s servers, and I’ve taken the same approach for other devices in my house.) The computer asked me if I wanted to update the iPad to the latest version of iOS, and I said yes without thinking much about it. Everything seemed to go fine, but then at the very end I saw an error message that I had never seen before telling me to press the iPad’s home button to attempt data recovery. What the heck? Nervous that I had somehow lost data on my daughter’s iPad, I pressed the button as instructed and crossed my fingers.
I then waited a while while the iPad told me that it was attempting data recovery:
During the approximately 10 minutes that the iPad spent on this screen, I did some quick research on the Internet, and found lots of other folks saying that this happened to them and that everything was fine when the process finished. Sure enough, after the iPad finished its data recovery, everything was back to normal, with the latest version of iOS installed.
I’m glad that my initial panic that I had lost data on the iPad turned out to be unjustified. I don’t know why the update failed initially, but apparently Apple has a Plan B that swings into action when the normal update process fails. If you ever see this error message on your iPhone or iPad, hopefully you will recall this post before you get too nervous, and then after you press the home button and let the data recovery process begin, all will be fine for you as well.
thank you because I’m about to fuckin scream. lmao this is why i never update or back my stuff up – it always ends up being this crazy long process and breaks causing me crazy anxiety. so pissed off right now lmao so thanks for the post.
Thank you for this post! I was about to loose my mind.
Oh my my iPad just did this, I was updating just before about to go on a pane where I needed my iPad for films I thought I was screwed 😂
Absolutely hilarious that I am not alone. I was approaching full on meltdown.
i tried downgrading from ios 12 beta 2 to ios 11.4 and this screen popped up. after 5 tries, it always ends with “data recovery failed”. if there is any way i could get this fixed please let me know.
same
Hey Jm,
I also downgraded from ios 12 beta 2 to ios 11.4 and faced same problem. After lot of tries, this method worked for me:
1. Open itune in your mac/PC.
2. Turnoff your phone and connect it to you mac/pc.
3. Open you phone in recovery mode. (Press power button and volume down button at same time.)
4. Keep pressing both button until you didn’t see you phone is connected to mac/pc. (there will be a pop up on mac/pc.)
5. Release power button but keep pressing volume down button for 3-4 seconds.
6. Itunes will give you option to recover your phone.
7. Recover it and you are good to go.
*you will not get you data, if have a backup you can restore later.
thanks
pk
And after restart you get attempting data recovery?
Its happening to me ! but i didnt want to restore my previous backup ! supper annoyed !! i wanted it to fresh and clean but now im stuck having to wait 10 min and then im gonna have to reset the phone again to factory settings annoying!! they should give us the option if we want to restore to our backup or an older backup which i had !
What would happen if you encountered continuous errors in attempting to recover data state and you had the USB accessories turned off in settings and it’s been over an hour since you’ve been able to access your device because of the update error? What do you do then? Because I’m lost. I don’t know what else to try, my phone is no longer recognized in iTunes or any other software, so I can’t recover the device.
thanks a ton! it worked for me
when i plug my usb in my iphone 8 vibrates 3 times and doesnt show up on my pc/itunes,
i know iam a bit late but please help