Hi Lawrence, yes, I had used encrypted backups before with my previous iPhone X. I deleted these backups when I migrated from it to the iPhone 13. I know the password I used for these backups, as I use 1Password and it´s an automatically generated (strong) password. I tried using this one and it didn´t work.
When I moved to the iPhone 13 I decided to delete the old backups because this time I migrated using the wireless process where you get both devices close to each other and then just go through the migration prompts that come up on the new device. When I tried to backup the new iPhone to my Mac I also generated a new (automated) backup password with 1Password and I tried using it to replace the old password I had been using for the previous (now deleted) backups, using the "Change Password" button but this also didn´t work. In summary, I have both the old and new (strong) backup passwords and none of them are working.
As you say, it seems my Mac does "remember" I had used encrypted backups in the past, but maybe it got mixed up because this time I migrated between iPhones using the wireless process, and then I deleted my old iPhone X backups and tried to make a new local backup with my new (recently migrated) iPhone?
Anyway, I can see two scenarios that might save me the hassle of having to reset all settings and then reconfiguring everything manually again on this iPhone:
- Backup my new iPhone to iCloud using the temporary cloud backup service that Apple is providing in iOS 15 for people that want to migrate to new iPhones (I don´t have a paid iCloud account and need more than the 5GB I have available). After I have made one backup to iCloud I could then wipe the settings and try to enter a new password for local encrypted backups. If this works OK, I´m not sure I would be able to restore my iPhone again from the iCloud backup I had previously done.
- Migrate my current phone to a different (brand new) iPhone, and then use the new one to try and start doing local backups again. Hopefully this one should ask me for a brand new backup encryption password the first time I try to do this and then everything would be fine.
For now, I don´t have any backups from this iPhone (but I still have copies of the old iPhone X local encrypted backups offline, in the Time Machine backups I´m doing for the Mac).
What do you say? Maybe I´m being too fussy and I should just reset all settings and go through the hassle of reconfiguring everything again on this iPhone? I do have a lot of customization done, and I also use this iPhone in a Corporate environment, so I have to also deal with MDM stuff, etc...