iPad Corrupt icloud backups with 13.4.1?

[Ombatay]

Anybody ever had issues and unable to use multiple icloud backups for a restore due to some corruption? Story as follows...

Model is ipad pro 11" fall 2018 (256gb with LTE). Did overnight automatic update from 13.4->13.4.1. Woke up to find device with black screen, apple logo with progress bar under and progress bar at 99%. Waited. And waited. And waited, after about 8-10 hours and now worrying about screen burn in, hard reset. White screen with "swipe to upgrade" appears, completely unresponsive to touch input, soft reboots itself after about 60 seconds and goes back to swipe to upgrade screen and is stuck in perpetual loop.

Ok. Clearly the ipadOS update corrupted and I need a restore. No problem, I have icloud backups. DFU Mode -> Restore, seems to be working, allows me to set up face ID etc. Then of course I choose to restore from backup. Which it looks like it works, and then it restarts to black screen-apple logo-progress bar... makes it to 99% and.. see above. Same process. Hard reset results in swipe to upgrade loop. Ok. Recovery mode and I restore again. Try to use my icloud backup from a week prior. Same problem. Ok, restore again and this time lets set it up as a new ipad. Works fine. But I need my data so it's time to get crafty. Figure maybe this is a 13.4.1 issue and put the 13.5 public beta on it and then, rather than DFU mode restore, go to "erase all contents" and then try to restore from backup. No dice. Still in the swipe to upgrade loop. Happens using both my 4/26/20 and my 4/20/20 icloud backups. Can't downgrade to 13.4 since apple stopped signing that one, so that's out of the question.

I was able to successfully restore using a backup from 11/2019 when I had to swap the device under warranty for a hardware issue... So that worked. That was a backup made from a different (although identical hardware configuration) ipad pro. But now I'm 5 months behind on my backups (which ultimately I think is probably just app configuration since everything else (photos/notes/etc) is on icloud).

Not sure how to troubleshoot this any further, apple support has been very interested in the story but ultimately completely unhelpful.

 

[DribbleCastle]

Same issue but with my iPhone! I had this earlier in April and got back to 13.4 at that time, but my phone auto-ugpraded to 13.4.1 and same issue happened again. Like you, I have the same problem trying to go to 13.5 and restoring my iCloud backup.

Same "swipe to upgrade" reboot loop. I haven't tried an older backup. Crazy that I just searched this and you posted 16 mins ago.

 

[DribbleCastle]

I have a call scheduled with an Apple engineer tomorrow but doubt much will come of it. Probably will just grab logs. Until then I have to use my phone as "new"

 

[Ombatay]

Oh that sounds like it at least be a little bit more high yield than the apple support I've been able to reach thus far, curious what they have to add. How did you get to the level of talking to an apple engineer?

 

[DribbleCastle]

They escalated me to a senior person and I basically explained again what things I had done. Pretty much the same as you. I might have vented a little bit about how I it was a dead end. Then the senior person just suggestes that was an option so I took it. Btw, this was all through their chat support.

I have a strong feeling it will be them gathering logs and then I’ll never get a fix until some future iOS release which at that point is too late and I would have already rebuilt my phone from the ground up. Man, do you use a lot by not having a backup though, even your Apple Watch backups are gone.

I had a local backup to iTunes probably 3-9 months ago but looked for it today and it was gone. I remember deleting it about 2-3 months ago thinking I would never need something so old. Now I think I’m going to keep one periodiccally just for this type of occasion. iCloud backup as been rock solid for me for so many years and devices. Shame this has happened to a handful of us. I’m sure many more have not reported it.

Side note. I have an iPad backup in iCloud as well, but no issues there with 13.4.1.

 

[DribbleCastle]

For those following the saga, there are some others talking about the issue over on the Apple forums.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251214032?answerId=252565154022&replyId=252565154022

 

[DribbleCastle]

FYI, found a workaround and posted on the Apple discussion board.

 

[Ombatay]

Thanks very much for the updates. I see the workaround, unfortunately no spare device to make this work. If only I could downgrade my ipad to 13.4, then I could do this... I wonder if this will be fixed in the next 13.5 beta, maybe I just do without the device until then and try again.