Oh noes. I'm dead.

September 27, 2012 9:50 AM

Last night, while playing with Find My iPhone, I erased my wife's iPhone. That's right. I erased my wife's iPhone. Apparently, it wasn't backing up to iCloud. Unless I have a good backup on her laptop via iTunes, I am screwed, right?

Help.

posted by 4ster to computers & internet (13 answers total)

You might want to check out that other thread from today about divorce attorneys ;)

How much can you load back manually? Photos, music and contacts hopefully exist somewhere else outside of the Apple ecosystem.
posted by COD at 9:55 AM on September 27, 2012 [5 favorites]

Unless I have a good backup on her laptop via iTunes, I am screwed, right?

Unfortunately this seems correct.
posted by mazola at 10:00 AM on September 27, 2012

This program claims it can recover data from the iPhone's storage, as well as iTunes backup files. I have no idea whether this is true or not-- research it thoroughly before you shell out.
posted by Sunburnt at 10:01 AM on September 27, 2012

Was her phone passcode locked? I seem to recall that that limits the forensic restoration capabilities.
posted by Kyol at 10:12 AM on September 27, 2012

I have used wondershare to retreive a bunch of pictures off of a tablet that i erased like an idiot...what was it? About $30? Divorce attorneys start around $3000, medical costs for getting run over by your wife's car 8 or 9 times...around $30,000... So yeah well worth it, even if it doesn't work.
Also, do it BEFORE YOU DO ANYTHING ELSE TO THE PHONE ITSELF or you will just corrupt the memory...if you can find everything in itunes on her laptop first tho, thats awesome too...
It will take a while to restore everything with WS tho...it retrieves EVERYTHING...so if yr looking for jpegs it will also pull up temp files from the innernet..like the askmefi logo for example
posted by sexyrobot at 10:13 AM on September 27, 2012 [4 favorites]

Also, work quickly, every text and phone call is changing/rewriting memory and possibly, no, probably erasing stuff.
posted by sexyrobot at 10:23 AM on September 27, 2012 [1 favorite]

What kind of stuff do you think are loss? The first mistake was not having a backup. There is iCloud Backup and iTunes will backup as well. I personally prefer iTunes for my backups.

Now, what was really loss? If she isn't a heavy app user and utilizes iCloud or Google or something for her calendar/contacts/email/reminders and note syncing then she probably didn't lose much of anything. Anything purchased through iTunes or the App Store can be re-downloaded.

The only thing that she might of lost (besides configuration and settings) would be application data. Like, for instance, if she uses a journal app to record things in and didn't have that data backed up.
posted by nickerbocker at 10:33 AM on September 27, 2012 [1 favorite]

Also, if she had a passcode set there is some pretty hardcore data encryption that Apple uses. Once remotely wiped and the key is loss it is a serious effort to decrypt any of the data even if you do recover it.
posted by nickerbocker at 10:35 AM on September 27, 2012

When you sync to iTunes, doesn't it automatically make a backup of the phone's contents?

Connect your phone to the iTunes computer you normally sync to. Under the 'Mrs4Sters iPhone' window there should be a button that says 'Restore'.

Click it: you have nothing more to lose!
posted by TheOtherGuy at 10:36 AM on September 27, 2012 [2 favorites]

You aren't trying to find a way to restore it before she finds out, are you? That is a Bad. Idea. You gotta come clean; she's likely to be quite angry if you try to restore it and then act like nothing happened.
posted by thelonius at 12:07 PM on September 27, 2012 [2 favorites]

What thelonius said - I would freak the fuck out because I would immediately know something had happened and I would be wondering who'd had access to my phone.
posted by desjardins at 12:35 PM on September 27, 2012 [1 favorite]

If all else fails, here is a list of countries with no formal extradition treaty with the United States

In all seriouesness, though:
1. Fess up.
2. Check iTunes to see if it was backed up there
3. Whether or not you succeed or fail in restoring the data, apologize.
posted by DWRoelands at 12:50 PM on September 27, 2012 [5 favorites]

A lot of the data on the phone may be elsewhere. Were her contacts and calendar synced with a desktop programor an online service? Was photostream active? Music?

That still leaves a lot of settings, and data in third-party apps, but it is a start.
posted by Good Brain at 10:48 PM on September 27, 2012