[angelthi]

First of all, I apologize. I am completely tech illiterate. And I am pretty desperate right now. I upgraded to the new OS by going to the BB website and followed all the directions. And I think i committed a cardinal BB sin by not backing up my BB before doing the upgrade. I know at some point it said it would create a backup automatically and I've searched through the forums but (as mentioned in other threads) I cannot find ANY .ipd files on my computer. At all. Long story short, I followed all the screens to upgrade, my phone rebooted and everything was gone except for my 3 email accounts and whatever was on my media card. From what I've read, the 3rd party apps are a lost cause but whatever, I can download those again. My biggest problem right now is my calendar and my contacts, both of which are completely empty. I could have sworn that I had done at least ONE backup previously but I can't find any of those files either.

Is it possible that there was NO backup made like the upgrade screen had told me??? I hope this is not the case as I don't know how I am supposed to get all of my contacts back. Or am I just not looking in the right place or for the right thing?

Hopefully someone will be able to shed some light on this. And I definitely learn from my mistakes and will be doing regular backups from now on... once I actually have information to backup.

[Minako]

I freaked out before when I accidentally updated without backing up my info.
It should auto backup in your My Documents, at least, that's where mine was.

[angelthi]

Unfortunately, I have done a file search on my computer for anything with the word backup in it and only came up with my computer's own backup system. And I searched for ipd to no avail.

[holtztwins]

try doing a file search on your computer using your pin # as the file name, also make sure you search all folders, even hidden ones

[Henry740]

i would highly suggest you take your pc to a computer tech guru such as geek squad to see if they can help you locate that file if its that important to you i myself work as a computer tech and i do get customers who cant locate files but doing a extensive search on that HDD, it was possible to locate.......just suggesting an option!

[Accidental Post]

Screw geek squad. Open search then use this exact term *.ipd if something comes up you have a backup if nothing you have no backup. Have you ever synced the phone? If so re-sync it

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[Henry740]

Screw geek squad. Open search then use this exact term *.ipd if something comes up you have a backup if nothing you have no backup. Have you ever synced the phone? If so re-sync it

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

hey dude, this was a suggestion, not something for you to talk smack about!!!!

[Accidental Post]

Not talking smack why send someone to a place that charges you when you could help for free?

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[Henry740]

Not talking smack why send someone to a place that charges you when you could help for free?

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

they dont always charge, something that small they could look into it quick without charging, sometimes they can be very helpfull behind that counter without having to dish out any $$$. he can just give it a try and see what happens.

[Accidental Post]

They may not charge. But I didn't charge for what I said and they would do the same then the sale would start something like this. Well sir/mam we have data recovery software that maybe able to get that file back. If you would like we can try that it will be x dollars (insert number here)

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[Jzic2]

First try to go and unhide your folders, by doing this:

Go to Start, My computer single click it with the left side of your mouse, go to Tools, Folder Options, you will see a bunch of tabs go to View. Scroll down and click on show hidden files and folders and then click OK.

After doing this go back to start, search for hidden files and folders, make sure that hidden files and folders are included if it asks you. Then put in your pin no. and if you cross your fingers hopefully something will come up.

Good luck.

[angelthi]

Thanks for everyone's help.

So I have searched (including non-indexed, hidden, and system files) for ipd, backup, and my pin number. Nothing. I guess I don't have any option but to accept it. But I guess I'm just wondering where this supposed backup went? And my upgrade went smoothly with no interruptions or anything of the sort. Also, is there any way to get 3rd party apps that I already paid for through the crackberry app store without having to pay again?

[WJF84]

If you updated via DM it will have created a backup.

Look in your documents folder carefully.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[wentouch]

If you had used DM in the past, it will likely have synched your contact and, perhaps, your calendar to Outlook or similar program. If this is the case, you can simply resynch again to retrieve that info.

If you purchased your 3rd party apps from Crackberry, you can go to Your Accounts where you can reload your purchased apps and retrieve registration keys.

[Rooster]

While upgrading, you have a choice to auto backup you files by default. Unless you deliberately chose not to do this, there should be a backup in your documents folder.

[JamieDm4]

If you plug your storm into your computer you should see two drives, one for the internal storm memory and another one for the 8 gig card. Look in the internal drive and you should see a my documents folder. Your backup file might be in that folder. Just look in all the folders in both the drives on your storm and an .ipd might pop up. Worked for me when I thought I had lost everything.

[EnergyPlus]

All the advice I read for locating your backup makes sense to me, that's how I'd do it. I can tell you that you have to do some extra steps to back up 3rd party apps, so don't expect to find those if you haven't taken the steps. Regarding your calendar and contacts, do you not routinely (or even, semi-routinely) synch your device with your computer (i.e. with Outlook)? If so, you simply need to re-synch again and you'll have them. That's what I did. I can't offer any help on the status of automatic backups as I did not leave that to chance, I made sure to synch before upgrading, copied 3rd party apps to a folder on my desktop and did everything else neccessary to prepare. Even then, I had to download a few apps from the app store to get everything back as some apps did not appear to install correctly from my backup folder.

3rd party apps purchased from here on the Crackberry apps store are easy to download again, just log in to the app store and everything you purchased will be listed, along with a notice of the version you originally purchased and the currently available one. Your activation codes (where required) are even listed. It works great.

[angelthi]

Thanks to everyone for all their suggestions but unfortunately I think I must have just done something incorrectly. I also haven't used the sync function for my calendar and contacts before. I guess it's a good thing I'm not yet completely dependent on my phone... yet. I've only ever done one OS upgrade before and that was when I first got the phone. I did it OTA but this time I kept getting the message that I had to delete x.xMB of information to continue. I tried everything I found on the forums to work around this but gave up and decided to go the other route instead.

Suffice it to say that I have learned my lesson and will be backing up and syncing on a regular basis and before any updating. At least it was a good opportunity to whittle down my contacts list. I guess if I can't remember a contact that was there then they weren't that crucial in the first place.

Also thank you for letting me know about how to get my purchased 3rd party apps back from the crackberry app store. That definitely helped out a lot.