itunes could not restore the iphone because the backup was corrupt or not compatible with the iphone that is being restored what do I do?

Go to iTunes menu EDIT/PREFERENCES, select DEVICES tab. Can you see how many backups are there in the box with Date and Time.

If you have more than one backup, make sure you note the date and Time.

When you start the Restore, the iPhone Backup shown will give you the date and time which is usually the latest one(may the one you did after your phone has been reset). Click on it will give you option to choose the previous one. Try out each one beginning from near current date and see which one works.

I was searching for the answer to this prob too.

Thanks wiclee

I have the same error message but my problem is slightly different. I synced my phone with iTunes and then around an hour later I saw a message on my phone saying that the phone had to be restored. I hooked it back up to iTunes, it went through the restore process and appeared to be working fine. After all the data on my phone was erased it said "iTunes could not restore the iPhone because the backup was corrupt or not compatible." So now the phone is restored to factory settings and the only backup I have gets this error message. I can't imagine my iPhone would sync with iTunes fine, then tell me an hour later to restore to a corrupt backup file that oesn't work but that's apparently what happened. Please tell me something can be done to get all my info back?

Hi all. iTunes was glitching on my iPhone so I thought, hey, I'll reset and restore from backup. And then I got the error discussed above. I tried numerous older back-ups and the phone gave me the same error for every back-up I had on iTunes AND iCloud. Why would all my backups -- and these date back for months -- be corrupt?

Any thoughts would be most appreciated.

Thanks!

I am experiencing the same issue. AT&T submitted my request to apple to unlock my iphone. as part of this I am supposed to backup and restore the phone. The backup works, but I get the same error you do. I would advise others to hold off on unlocking their phone with AT&T until Apple posts a solution to this problem.

If it's happening for multiple backups, iCloud AND iTunes, it would mean there was corrupted data on the iPhone that went into the backups, which both iTunes and iCloud are preventing from being put back onto the iPhone to prevent any corrupted data from being put back on.

You can use a tool like Backup Extractor to get any contacts, SMS, Photos, etc. that are in a backup, granted that data isn't what's corrupted

Thanks. I'm not with AT&T (Rogers in Canada). But I appreciate the tip re: unlocking. Thanks!

Cool. Thanks for the tip on Backup Extractor -- I really appreciate it.

I deleted all (iphone) backups from my computer, backed up iphone, and now the restore works. Problem resolved.

Had the exact same problem whilst upgrading my iphone 4 to ios5. Lost all my data.

Backed up ios 4.3 (8F190) iphone4. Upgraded to ios 5.1 (9B176), and then tried to restore.

No joy, repeated the restore attempts countless times - lost all my data

Tried again with a simulated test.

Created a new itunes account on a new PC (64-bit windows 7), latest itunes(10.6.1.7- 64 bit).

As my data is toast, I'm using the ios 5.1 phone to try to see if it was me or an apple bug, or something elsewhich caused this to happen.

After quite a few more hours at it, it looks like a bug in iTunes / ios. I would be very happy to be wrong, though.

Tried repeatedly restoring an ios 4.3 backup to 5.1 - no joy.

Happy to try again - it does restore partially (got the call register transferred, but no SMS'es or anything else).

Any ideas?

I have the exact same problem as you, up graded from 4.3.3 to 5.0.1 and cant restore to the backup that I created before upgrading. Please let me know if you find a solution. Thanks.

I have this same issue! ANy solution??

Thank you! This worked for me and it wasn't necessary to buy any additional app to fix the problem. 🙂

the ipad i backed up from has been restored to factory setting but i have the backup on my itunes does apple have a software to repair corrupt backups like decipher backup repair .

Please keep of your iTune backup version and iPhone OS version same then it works fine.