DeBak91

Q: iTunes cannot restore the iPhone "_____" because the backup is either corrupt or not compatible with current iPhone

I had been using an iPhone 4 for a while, with an old iTunes account that has all my stuff from over the years on it, on my computer. A week ago, I dropped by iPhone 4 in the sink and it got covered with water, despite quickly pulling it out, putting it in rice under a lamp, the phone was shot, and I was without a phone. My Dad, who is on the same AT&T plan with me, was using an iPhone 3. He was available for an upgrade, so he got a new iPhone, and gave me the iPhone 3. Now i'm not an apple master or anything but I have a good idea of what I am doing, normally, I backup my phone to my computer every few months. Basically everytime I plug it in to my computer which isn't very often because I just charge it with the wall charger. So got my SIM card with the same phone number and all, and obviously, while still being my number, it had my dads apps, messages, contacts and photos on it. So I bring it home, and plug it into my computer, I cancel the intial sync, and right click on the phone on the left side of iTunes and hit "restore from backup" I look through the list of backups, and the most recent one I see is from Dec 11, 2011. Which is surprsing because i'm pretty sure I had backed up since then, but I say whatever i'll still get contacts apps and most pictures back etc. So I hit it, and go through with it, and it tells me there was a more recent date of backing up, relieved, I click on that and continue, the normal bar comes up it says something like estimated time 30 minutes, so I walk away, come back 5 minutes later, and I get an error message saying, "iTunes could not restore the iPhone "____'s iPhone" because the backup was corrupt or is not compatible with the iPhone." Confused, I go back and try again, however this time I click on "old backup (the dec 11th one rather than the newer one) and the same thing happens after a few minutes. I go back a third time, and select a time from August of 2011. And I hit restore, and it goes through. However, this happened to be a backup I made right when I got my new iPhone 4, and therefore I basically restored my phone, to having nothing. Thats where I sit right now, with none of my contacts or pictures. I'm not sure if I backed up to iCloud or not and i'm not sure how to retrieve that. Some extra things: When I try to sync my iTunes library and apps onto the new iphone 3, I need to greatly reduce the number of songs and apps beacuse this iPhone is only an 8gb while the old one was 16, (I don't think that is the reason I am getting the error message though because when I sync it clearly says "Your iPhone does not have enough space). Also, this is obviously an iPhone 3, not an iPhone 4, updated with the most recent iTunes software, which, I believe is 5.1.

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated as I have over 1,400 pictures saved on my old phone (very important things to me) and a contact list of over 300 including important friends, coaches, teachers and workers.

 

Thank you very much, if it doesn't say my email on here try me at debak91@gmail.com

 

Thanks again

-Drew

 

Edit: The current phone is an iPhone 3G, not a 3Gs.

iPhone 3G, iOS 5.1

Posted on Mar 13, 2012 4:44 PM

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Q: iTunes cannot restore the iPhone "_____" because the backup is either corrupt or not compatible with current iPhone

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  • by KiltedTim,

    KiltedTim KiltedTim Mar 13, 2012 6:15 PM in response to DeBak91
    Level 9 (54,952 points)
    iPhone
    Mar 13, 2012 6:15 PM in response to DeBak91

    You can not restorea a backup made with a newer version of iOS to a phone with an older version of iOS.

     

    1400 photos stored on the phone? Do you not EVER extract them? The camera roll is intended to be temporary storage. Like the SD card in a digital camera. You should be extracting them to your computer on a regular basis.

     

    Contacts should be synced to a compatible contact manager or cloud service. If you were not doing any of these things, guard your backups with your life and make sure your computer is being backed up on a regular basis, because you won't be able to get them back until you get a new phone with at least the same version of iOS that your 4 had.

     

    There are 3rd party applications that say they can extract this information from a backup file, but I don't have personal experience with them.

  • by DeBak91,

    DeBak91 DeBak91 Mar 14, 2012 10:20 AM in response to KiltedTim
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 14, 2012 10:20 AM in response to KiltedTim

    Thanks a ton for responding, so basically unless I were to revert my iOS back a few times, I won't be able to back it up. l also thought that when my phone backs up to my computer it saved my pictures, as this is what happened the last times I restored my iPhone from my computer. I will search through my computer becuase I believe I did back them up. What would be the best way to get my contacts? And I think my above understanding of iOS was wrong, and that once i get a new iphone 4s I will be able to restore?

     

    Thanks soo so much for your help.

  • by KiltedTim,

    KiltedTim KiltedTim Mar 14, 2012 10:25 AM in response to DeBak91
    Level 9 (54,952 points)
    iPhone
    Mar 14, 2012 10:25 AM in response to DeBak91

    You contacts should be synced with a compatible contact manager or a cloud service. Were you syncing them with anything or just backing them up?  The backup  is contained in a single file. You can try 3rd party software to extract items from it, but I haven't used any of them, so I can't really direct you to one specifically that would do the job. Most of them are not free.  If you were not extracting the photos, but were only backing up the phone as a whole, then the only place they might exist would be in the backup itself. Otherwise, they should be wherever it is on your computer that you were extracting them to.

     

    You should be able to restore to a new iPhone 4. The reason you can not restore to the phone you are using is because the device you backed up was running a more recent version of iOS than the phone you want to restore to at the moment.