Took backup of my previous iPhone on an external hard drive and now trying to restore it on a new iPhone but it’s encrypted and I don’t know which password it needs

You need the password that was used to encrypt the backup of your iPhone 13 Pro Max.

Unfortunately, there is no way to recover the data in the backup without the correct password.

If you asked the store to back up your iPhone 13 Pro Max, they should have provided you with the password that was used for this on your receipt for service.

Check with the store to see if they still have a copy of the service order with password information.

As to how your backup was encrypted, it had to have been done on their end when they made the backup. Now, when you make a backup on Finder or iTunes (Windows), there's a button to choose to encrypt the backup which you create a password to ONCE. Then as long as you have the encrypt button always checked, backups will be encrypted and will require the password you created to encrypt the backup. There is NO WAY to find the encrypted backup password, so it's HUGELY important to remember it or a backup will be encrypted for all eternity.

I've never heard of a backup growing in size larger than the volume of the device the device came from. I can't however, guarantee it's not possible.

I think this shop who made the backup for you is your ONLY salvation here. If they can't get the backup to load to your iPhone from Finder on the Mac they used, the backup is just useless to you at this time.

That said, as long as you synced things with iCloud, you can sign into your new iPhone and turn on iCLoud sync services for things like Notes, Photos, Music, Messages, etc., and they'll all download to your new iPhone (as long as you are using the same Apple ID on the new phone).

Farah_sokkar wrote:

Thanks a lot for all the useful information, you’ve been really helpful and supportive.

Last thing

As a last option, is it possible to ask them to take off the internal drive of my old phone that contains my data and put it into a working iPhone by that I can access my data ? Since I have my old phone’s screen passcode and all other passwords needed to secure the data

Sorry, but that is NOT possible.

The store could not have backed up the iPhone directly to an external drive. They would have had to have backed up to a Mac.....(was this your Mac)....or.....(was it the store's Mac)?

Then.....they could have copied the backup from the default backup location on the Mac to another external drive. Do you know how the external drive was formatted?

This is sounding more and more about file and drive permission issues with all the file transfers going on. These are the only things that I can think of that would make the backup possibly look like it was encrypted if it really wasn't.

At some point, you would have had to have transferred or copied the backup on the external back over to your Mac, correct?

I'm not sure we have the ability to help you further. The issues I see are:

1. The backup is encrypted and we can't possibly help with an encrypted backup. That's something you have to work out with the shop who made the backup
2. The backup is significantly larger than the iPhone storage you want to restore it too. You can't put more data on a phone than its capable of holding.

I'd like to know how they managed to backup an iPhone to an external drive? I didn't think this was possible to begin with and iTunes or Finder had to be used?

OK......do you have a Mac with Finder you can upload the backup too? I don't think it's possible to connect a memory stick to an iPhone and download an update to an iPhone.