I think I may have asked this question in the past, but I couldn't seem to find the thread in search... Right now my 3rd Gen 64GB is on iOS 4.1 (the Gamecenter update) and now quite a bit of apps require 4.2 or higher. I don't update my iPod because it always gets wiped in the process. How do I update it without losing all of my data?
In my experience you can't. IOS 5 took a massive 5 hours to update on my 64gb 3rd gen and after all that it was still completely messed up with my music and half my apps being inaccessable. I think it took so long because my iPod was mostly full but still 5 hours and then messing everything up anyway. With apple it's just hoping for the best. Once you get over the IOS 5 hurdle the updates are easier but still take longer than most other devices or even to install windows from scratch.
I have never had an update wipe out my iPhone or iPad, so I'm not sure what to tell you. Everything is retained unless you do a restore without restoring from backup, but why would you do that? Just update. If you have an issues, restore, but from backup. What am I missing? If you're restoring from backup, make sure you have a backup to restore from! Let iTunes back it up before you do an update. If you turned off automatic backups, either turn them on again, or manually do a backup by right clicking your device in the sidebar in iTunes and backup now or whatever the option is.
Oh, one thing that isn't backed up are photos. You need to get those off your phone if they aren't already on your computer. Otherwise you will lose them. It will back up that they were on there (if you use iPhoto on a Mac), but they aren't in the backup itself. So it will put them back on for you if you need for some reason to restore from backup, but they need to be on your computer. Maybe this works somehow on Windows as well, but I don't know. In any case, make sure you copy off any new photos before the update. I'm pretty sure it will warn you of that.
I was haunted for lif back years ago when I lost everything off my iPod touch, twice, after updating. So noe I never update ANYTHING. All my devices are running the system It came with. Maybe apple was dodgey with that years go and now the problem Is fixed. Once I just plugged my iPod into my laptop and everything was deleted. I think apple was very strict trying to counteract piracy back then.. But they seemed to have relaxed a little since it's so easy to jailbreak these days there's nothin they can really do about piracy so they loosened the ropes a little maybe. Im still not sure if I have the balls to actually update anything still though. But when I start getting "this game requires iOS 5.1" for atleast 3 games I really badly want to play.. Then I probably will hope my breath and update. It won't be THAT bad if I lose everything. But it would be annoying. I don't keep many songs on my iPad anyway, I just mainly use it for gaming so I'd just have to redownload the games and I have photos but it wouldn't be the end of the world if I lost them so maybe I should put on my big girl panties and cross over to the darkside. Actually fck no! I've heard not to ever update to a new weapon when it first comes out because most games aren't supported yet.. So in a few months I guess I'll get them panties out.. Maybe.
