iPhone 3G S in a blackRa1n infinite loop...Please help

[iphone09]

I'm a n00b and this my first posting here. Apologize if I sound stupid with my questions. Any help would be a big life saver of my extremely important data.

I'm trying to recover my iPhone 3G S and here is my issue:

My 3GS was jailbroken with blackRa1n RC2 in 2009. It is a tethered jailbreak and that is killing me now. Recently, I also unlocked my iphone with ultrasnow RC1 and it went thru fine. My specs are baseband version: 05.11.07 with firmware version 3.1.2, 7D11. In June 2011, I accidentally ran jailbreakme.com from Safari on my iphone and it caused trouble in booting my iphone 3G S. I then rebooted with BlackRa1n RC3 and things were ok thereafter. Two days ago, I dropped my iPhone and the guy who fixed the broken glass suggested that he can fix my iPhone 3G S to go for a untethered jailbreak. I agreed to his suggestion and he screwed up something on my iPhone and now the iPhone goes into a infinite loop into recovery mode with iTunes logo and back to the apple logo. I ran blackra1n RC3 50 times in a row without any success (by reading the excellent threads here). I also used redsn0w with original 3.1.2 firmware and it didn't work either. The data I have (300+ photos, 20+ audio recordings, contact information) are all extremely important for me and I don't want to lose them at any cost. Unfortunately, I don't have a backup at all.

All of the pictures and audio are related to my newborn baby and I don't want to lose it.


I ran blackra1n RC3 overnight and that didn't help.

I wanted to add some information:

All along, I was using iTunes 10.x and just formatted my machine completely and installed iTunes 9.1 64bit as I'm running Windows 7 home Premium 64 bit.

Also, before I did the unlock last month, I saved the SHSH using TinyUmbrella:

4234202094991-iphone2,1-4.1.shsh
4234202094991-iphone2,1-4.3.3.shsh
4234202094991-iphone2,1-5.0b1.shsh
4234202094991-iphone2,1-5.0b2.shsh

And after the unlock was done, I saved the SHSH files again:

4234202094991-iphone2,1-4.1.shsh
4234202094991-iphone2,1-4.3.3.shsh
4234202094991-iphone2,1-5.0b1.shsh
4234202094991-iphone2,1-5.0b2.shsh
4234202094991-iphone2,1-5.0b3.shsh

Also, as per the iPhone box, on the back, the serial number is 87940******. So, is this Week 40 with newer bootrom?

Will this help in any way to do a non-destructive restore to factory settings? Unfortunately, I didn't save the 3.1.2 SHSH file from Cydia when I jailbroke the iPhone.

Kindly help me.

 

[Jmills87]

At this point your only option is to restore 4.3.3. If you didn't run a backup through iTunes unfortunately your photos and such are lost for good. Make sure you use sn0wbreeze or Pwnage Tool to create your custom 4.3.3 firmware file because if you restore a factory firmware file your baseband will be updated and you won't be able to unlock.

 

[iphone09]

Oh...That is devastating to hear. I read somewhere that the Restore only updates the System partition and not the user partition on the iPhone. Do you think it is real? But, even if it touches the user partition, if the files although deleted (are still intact), can I undelete them?

Btw, is there any kind of forensic tool that can do the magic?

Thanks.

 

[iGaz]

Unfortunately without a backup you will lose all your data during a restore. It seems like this is your only option right now.

As jmills87 said restore to 4.3.3 so you can get an untethered jailbreak and make sure to create a custom firmware with snowbreeze so you preserve your baseband and are still able to unlock with ultrasnow. If you upgrade to the stock 4.3.3 then you won't be able to unlock your phone...

 

[iphone09]

Sorry to bug again. you guys are more knowledgeable than me. If I use PwangeTool or iReb and restore to custom IPSW without doing iTunes Restore directly, will this not preserve my data in the user partition?

Any ideas on forensic tool (e.g) Encase Smartphone Examiner?

 

[Jmills87]

No there is no way to preserve your data at all. Performing a restore will erase everything on the phone so it will be like you just got it from the store. If you would have done an iTunes backup you could have used a PC program to extract the data, but since you didn't there is no option to recover your data. But make sure to restore a custom firmware in order to preserve your baseband so you can unlock

 

[iphone09]

I was ABLE TO GET ALL OF MY DATA using ramdisk techniques. I think you guys should learn to educate people on their issues before telling something damaging!!!

 

[Jmills87]

Please share your method so that we can inform others who may have the same problem. It must be just for 3.x firmware, I've never heard of such a technique for iOS4

 

[iGaz]

I was ABLE TO GET ALL OF MY DATA using ramdisk techniques. I think you guys should learn to educate people on their issues before telling something damaging!!!

Pleas do tell. Your the first I've heard that was able to do it themselves without going to a private company...

 

[iphone09]

Go here:

Mostly iPhone hacking: Booting SSH ramdisk on new devices

This worked for me flawlessly.

 

[Jmills87]

Awesome thanks man! It looks like it does indeed work for i4s and iOS4 as well, this is great, thanks for sharing!