Hi!
After 26 hours of restoring my iPhone from backup on my Mac I got message that my backup is damaged and cannot be restored.
I have older iPhone backups on my Time Machine full iMac backups but is there a way to check their intergity BEFORE wasting 26 hours to roll in to iPhone?
iPhone 14 Pro
You can look at iPhone backups with the demo version of iMazing. If they are damaged you shouldn't be able to view the various items:
I only have the demo version to see what's being backed up from my iPhone.
You can look at iPhone backups with the demo version of iMazing. If they are damaged you shouldn't be able to view the various items:
I only have the demo version to see what's being backed up from my iPhone.
> No way I've heard of.
Gawd... How am I supposed to put my trust into the local iPhone backups from now on, then?.. The question is rhetorical.
>I highly suspect somee Disk Corruption.
Initially I blamed drive, too. Bad sectors on HDD (of my Fusion Drive) looked very pretty likely by the backup behaviour. Yet, after some research I came to a conclusion that it's unlikely a drive prob. For many reasons: DiskUtil scan, SMART info displaying 0 bad sectors, not prob with any other apps and so on.
Moreover, the iPhone backup folder DID look to me corrupted even before a need to restore - it's size was more than 300GB while my iPhone is 256 GB only. For example, correct backup at my MacBook displays 56GB backup size.
> It may be wise to run SMART Utility to check the drives' health.
Displays nothing serious. Detailed view of probs displays 0 bad sectors or relocated ones. Surface if fine.
And the other probs are most likely just a "cosmetic" logical failures that pop up during hard resets or power otages (happen all the time where iMac is located) - not a serious HW probs.
The failures above look like a "blah-blah" logical "no-problem" probs. Just a information noise. Drive surface is fine.
No way I've heard of.
26 hours means something is terribly wrong, add the damaged method & I highly suspect somee Disk Corruption.
You can use Drive DX to possibly get a better view of Drive health…
https://binaryfruit.com/drivedx
Thanks to Jack-19…
It may be wise to run SMART Utility to check the drives' health.
Drive surface need not be the cause, see Total Errors, Uncorrectable Error... could be a cable or connection issue, could even be Logic board or associated Chip
Overall SMART Status FAILING
Why so many hard resets or power outages (happen all the time where iMac is located) - not a serious HW probs. Power outages, I guess they are neither SW or HW problems, but still a very serious problem.
The utility indicates that the drive is FAILING. 38986 uncorrectable errors. Fusion drives have been prone to that, I think that is why they are no longer offered, maybe.
Frequent power outages can damage hard drives and SSDs. Consider getting a UPS to protect against that in the future.
DriveDX offers detailed diagnostics -- It shows temperatures and the relevant info-- which might give you more insight into why the drive is failing, but that maybe doesn't really matter at this point.
There can be other reasons for failure, not just drive surface, as BDAQUA points out.
For a 256 GB iPhone the backup and restore should take less than 20 minutes.
There is no good way to "test" an iPhone backup other than attempt a full restore as you did. But doing the backup to a healthy drive is a good start to maximize likelihood of success.
One mitigation is to make sure you have second and third copies of things on the phone that are important. For instance, images can be imported into Photos or other repositories and backed up there. iCloud Photos provides some protection against iPhone or drive failure. As for text messages (which often have important attached content), those can be received also on Macs and other devices. So you have copies in multiple places. Emails can be pirated on multiple devices. Contacts can be stored in iCloud.
There are third party applications (none are free) that claim to be able to read your data from an iPhone backup file. One of those might work on yours but I don't put a lot of faith in those.
I guess I don't share your acceptance of the "failing" hard drive warning as "cosmetic failures," "not serious," "no problem." I would replace that drive, not only did it fail the utility, but you actually see folders with the wrong size and your backup also was corrupted and failed. What other evidence do you need?
Thank you. Some clarifications, if I may. My main idea that few errors of drive cannot make a 256GB iPhone backup weight 300+GB - that's clearly a software problem.
The main evidence is the fact that Time Machine backups of that drive pass checks always fine. That can't happen if drive is providing corrupted data for copies.
> drive is FAILING. 38986 uncorrectable errors
It's not. The only reason HDD can b failing - degrading surface. Numbers above are just some logical incorrectable errors, most likely at the incorrect few transactions btw drive an controller. Nothing serious. Like lost packets on Ethernet. Drive is almost 7 years old so that's fine on that distance.
> There can be other reasons for failure, not just drive surface, as BDAQUA points out.
There's no any failure. Evrth worx fine. Just some logical errors. Not the ones that will make a 256GB iPhone backup weight 300+ GB. That's clearly a software bug.
>DriveDX offers detailed diagnostics
Everything else is fine. 100% or green
>For a 256 GB iPhone the backup and restore should take less than 20 minutes.
Can't b. Usb 2.0 is 40MB/s at most, while 256GB/20 mins is about 200MB/s in perfect conditions. Am I correct that iP 14 P interface is USB 2.0?
> I guess I don't share your acceptance of the "failing" hard drive warning as "cosmetic failures,"
Detailed info about errors is provided in log (screenshot above). These are errors of the interface btw HDD and controller or a cable or just unfinished transaction. These are not serious errors - justlogical. They dont affect reliability of HDD any way. Only speed ( as, for example, lost packets of Ethernet). Drive is almost 7 years old and 38986 is not so much for such an old device. The only serious sign of HDD wear out is surface failure - that is not present. Yet, changing cable would help I guess - but its time to change the whole device already, not just a cable so i wouldnt bother. Time for a device to pass away already. The only thing that bothers me how to check integrity of iPhone backup that has clearly nothing in common with HDD interface. For example, Time Machine backups of this HDD pass checks just fine - which would be impossible with HDD that cant store information properly.
I think Old Toad had the best suggestion in your case -- namely one of those utilities that claims to be able to extract content from an iPhone backup.
I think you are correct about the 480 Mb/s speed through the lightning connection on that phone. Still, the backups are incremental, so backups when updating an existing backup take a tiny fraction of the time for a full backup. Are you using 100% of your phone's 256 GB? If it is 100% full, that might lead to corruption and problems with the phone. Still, the very first backup could take more than an hour if the phone is 100% full. But after that, my backups take a few minutes. Also the backups don't back up all the iPhone storage, only user files/data, but the apps and system itself, which together can be quite a large fraction of that 256 GB, are not backed up.
Seven years for any hard drive (including one in a fusion drive) is past the expected life of commercial mechanical drives. As they age, such drives' mechanical mechanism starts to wear and stops working as smoothly, which can cause errors even if the disk surface is fine.
Maybe you should ask here and not an iMac community: https://discussions.apple.com/community/iphone
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Check integrity of iPhone backup on Mac
