How not to wipe your Iphone when upgrading to IOS 5

THE RACE to get hold of an Iphone 4S is on, but for the millions of existing Iphone users, the last couple of days have seen a different challenge to overcome - successfully updating your device to IOS 5.

As someone who has just attempted the challenge on an Iphone 4 this week, and ended up with a completely wiped device with no files or contacts saved, I thought it would be useful to share my tips on how not to do the update.

BACK UP EVERYTHING before attempting the update
This is the most important lesson I've learned, and the best tip I can pass on. When I updated my Iphone on Thursday, I did so without manually copying all of my content onto the PC, rather than just relying on itunes. During the process, Itunes posted no alerts or warnings that its backup had failed and went ahead with the update, a real failure on Apple's part. I had hundreds of photos and videos along with all my contacts and messages stored on the device itself, and nowhere else.

When the update had finished, I tried to restore the content, only to find that the original backup of all my photos, contacts and other files had failed before the IOS 5 upgrade, and so my Iphone was completely wiped. When I tried to restore them, I just got a message telling me, "Itunes could not restore the Iphone because the backup session failed."

And when I checked the backup file, it had saved nothing apart from one voicemail.

I'd never got around to copying my content or contacts off the Iphone onto external or online storage, partly because Apple doesn't make this easy and partly because it had never occurred to me that those files were only stored in one place. I prefer to blame Google for getting me so used to its world of online storage and instant access to any emails or documents I've ever created through Gmail or Google Docs, rather than my own lack of foresight. But that doesn't help me bring back all my lost files.

Don't rely on only Icloud for backups
Apple's new online storage system launched with the IOS 5 update, but there have already been issues with Icloud. A few of us on The INQUIRER team tried to access Icloud on Thursday from Iphones and Ipads but had no success, so we'd still advise saving all your media, content and other files on an external hard drive or other storage, as well as via Icloud.