For the past 2 weeks, every time I sync my phone I get the following error message: "iTunes could not back up the iPhone [phone name] because the backup could not be saved on the computer." I used to be able to backup fine but now it will not backup. I tried doing a restore with the phone but that did not solve the problem. I've got a 3G phone and am running 10.5.6. I've got plenty of available space on my hard drive.
Have you tried deleting the existing backup and creating an entirely new backup?
If not, go to iTunes > Preferences.
Your iPhone's backup or backups if there is more than one will be available under the Devices tab. You can delete the existing backup or backups from there.
After doing this, with your iPhone connected and available in the iTunes source list, control-click on your iPhone and at the menu window that appears, select Back Up.
I re-did the restore as a "new" phone and the problem still continues. I was able to ctrl-click backup on a different computer so that leads me to believe that it's a computer/hard drive problem rather than a phone problem. So, any ideas given this update?
i had the same issue. couldn't figure it out. spent an hour on the phone with apple....reinstalled itunes and the whole 9 yard.
here's what was wrong...
my "backup" folder permissions were set to "read only" for my user account. go to ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync and go to "get info" for the Backup folder. Make sure your permissions are set to "Read and Write" for your user account.
This may be the problem, maybe not...but I figured since it helped me, it may be someone else's issue too. I never switched my permissions, it just happened for some reason.
Going back to basics solved my problem but thanks to everyone who offered suggestions. I did check and my folder was read/write so that was ok. But thankfully checking that got me thinking...
What I did was just rename that backup folder to "backup-old" and then performed a sync. iTunes created a new backup folder and everything worked fine.