So first off, my iPad is my first iDevice. I hooked it up to my laptop when I first set it up, and that was the last time I've ever had it plugged into iTunes. So now that the iOS 5 update is upon us, it's time to hook it up again, do the backup, and all that jazz. Here's my question: if I backup my iPad to my laptop, wipe my iPad clean, install iOS 5, then restore everything from the backup, will my game data still be there? I only ask, because I've been hearing that it's best to install major iOS updates on a clean device. But since I've never done any of this, I have no clue.
Not sure. But I have deleted a game, and the game saved (maybe it was because of game center). If you have game center on those games, then they're fine. Anyway, iOS 5 isn't out in Australia... How long has it been out for? I checked it ten minutes ago and it wasn't there. I have updated my iPod and iPad since before iOS 4, and nothing happened.
I think it's pointless to wipe it the way I believe it works is you have two partitions on the device one contains the OS and the other contains all your apps and data. Everytime there is an IOS update it wipes the IOS partition blank and puts on a completely fresh image. This is reason Apple don't do incremental updates and you end up downloading about 700mb each time.
The answer to your question, Wizard Mike, is yes. If you do a proper backup everything will be carried over. I just did this myself on my own iPad 2. Teknikal, the update size is a completely separate issue, and furthermore they're moving away from that with iOS 5. In the future the updates will be over the air and download only the changed data, not the entire install file.
I don't think there is any reason to wipe the iPad clean before installing iOS 5. Just backup (it will take a while if you haven't done it in a long time), then update. The only reason to do a restore is if you are having an issues that might be solved by doing that.
Just plug your device in, it will backup anyway, then do all the updates (iTunes/iOS) it wants and you will be happy. One thing: Don't do the iTunes and the iOS update at once. I once did it, the iTunes update restarted iTunes and ####ed up the iOS update that was running and I had to completely reset my iPhone. But probably you need the 10.5 iTunes anyway before upgrading iOS
It's not a separate issue IOS 5 will be an entire IOS image file as usual, the old one will get replaced completely therefore there is no need to wipe it beforehand. Funnily enough I'm not looking forward to the faster incremental updates there will be a much higher chance of messing the OS up, I just hope there is still an option to get a full Image in a lot of ways Apple had it right the first time.
