iTunes could not backup iPhone because the iPhone disconnected

Spare Tire - Thank you so much. I could not get my iPhone 5 backed up onto iTunes (though I was able to backup to iCloud), getting the error with no specific error code or explanation. I tried restarting both MBA and iPhone, resetting PRAM, reparing permissions, verifying disk, creating a new user, using another Mac, and none of these worked. I followed your instruction, with a minor tweak (in #5, I had to reset all settings and contents on the iPhone to restore from the iCloud backup created in # 1), and boom! It's back to normal and I now can back up the iPhone to iTunes. The first sync took about 1 hour, but after that, my iPhone is just like the way it was before all the trouble. Thank you!

Add : I run Mountain Lion 10.8.3 and iTunes 11.0.2 on MBA 11-inch, Mid 2012 2 GHz Intel Core i7 8 GB 1600 MHz DDR3; and iOS 6.1.3 on my iPhone 5 32GB connected to KDDI in Japan.

Message was edited by: mskmtsmt

Spare Tire

My understanding is that iCloud will NOT back up or preserve app data. The app data is what I am trying to preserve. If I did not need to preserve app data, I would just nuke the entire iphone with a reformat and reload from scratch. Did your iCloud backup save your non-apple app data?

From: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4859

What is backed up

You get unlimited free storage for:

• Purchased music, movies, TV shows, apps, and books
Notes: Backup of purchased music is not available in all countries. Backups of purchased movies and TV shows are U.S. only. Previous purchases may not be restored if they are no longer in the iTunes Store, App Store, or iBookstore.

Some previously purchased movies may not be available in iTunes in the Cloud. These movies will indicate that they are not available in iTunes in the Cloud on their product details page in the iTunes Store. Previous purchases may be unavailable if they have been refunded or are no longer available in the iTunes Store, App Store, or iBookstore.

You get 5 GB of free iCloud storage for:

• Photos and videos in the Camera Roll
• Device settings (for example: Phone Favorites, Wallpaper, and Mail, Contacts, Calendar accounts)
• App data
• Home screen and app organization
• Messages (iMessage, SMS, and MMS)
• Ringtones
• Visual Voicemails

mskmtsmt Very glad that you device is working as normal. People helping people is great here. 🙂

GregGehr- App data is part of the backup no matter in iCloud or desktop. After I restore my iPad from iCloud, I didn't find any lose up to now, including all games progress 🙂 Good Luck.

Thanks Lawrence - renaming the backup solved this problem for me!

I finally found the solution!

After several days of pulling my hair out and voraciously reading several forums over this error, I finally tried, as a last resort, to delete the latest apps that I installed on my iPhone. I tried all the other measures, but I did not want to try this one because of the enormous hassle involved (losing all the time spent in setting up each app and letting go of the apps' saved data).

Here's what I did to determine which latest apps were installed on my iPhone:

1. Plug in iPhone to computer.
2. In iTunes, select iPhone from the list of connected devices.
3. While in the iPhone section, go to the "Apps" tab on top.
4. Click "Sort by Date" above the list of apps.
5. The buttons on the right side of each app will then show "Install" or "Remove" buttons, revealing which apps are currently installed on the iPhone.

I finally was able to narrow it down the iUnarchiver Pro app by the developer YuFanApp! 😠 Deleting this app caused my backup woes to disappear!! You can't imagine how happy I was then!

So how can I confirm that it's this particular app? My iPad also had this backup problem, and I did not delete any of its apps yet. But when I deleted *only* the iUnarchiver Pro app, backup was successful!

So my advice is to delete your recent apps. If you happen to have iUnarchiver Pro as well, delete it and your backup should be fine. Good luck! 🙂

PS. Stay clear from this app and its developer!

Thanks for the advice Spare Tire, and everybody else on this forum too.

Finally, after 8 freakin' months, I have made backups work again. I had to delete all photos, music, videos, etc. in order to get the size of the iphone backup down to the space avail. in iCloud (fortunately all that stuff is backed up elsewhere), then I got a good icloud backup to complete, reset/reformatted my iphone, but when I went to reload my icloud backup, THE ONE I DID IN THE MORNING, that took hours, WAS NOT THERE! I was literally screaming mad, but then it was suggested that rather than try to reload the iCloud backup via iTunes, perhaps I should try to do it directly on the iphone w/no iTunes involved. This worked! I reset the iphone again, chose reload iCloud backup directly on the iPhone with no iTunes in the loop, and TADA, the morning backup was on the list, and restored. It would not automatically download my apps, it choked on that too, but I was able to click manually on each app (11 pages!) and start each one loading. I now seem to have all my stuff back (at least what I cared about) and I just completed a iTunes manual backup too. I hope to NEVER go through anything like that again! (but I know I will).

Thank you SO much for your note Mick M - I turned off the enable wifi sync, and it finally backed up...thanks again.

I've solved the problem! For myself at least.

It was an app that was preventing my iPhone from backing up as Stephen has mentioned in his post. Exact same error message about my iPhone disconnecting while trying to backup as everyone elses, yet syncing still works, usually.

So I deleted a few apps around the same time as my last backup for my iPhone as well as some that I don't use, and coincidentally (or not) I suspect my problem was also an unzipping/unrar'ing app called iZip.

Long and short of it is I tried everything mentioned in this thread, which has been the most helpful thing I've come across so far, so thanks everyone. I won't list everything I tried, but yeh I can definitely vouch that deleting apps around the time of your last backup is the best bet.

Good luck everyone!

This is so infuriating, but after many many months of this issue, I successfully backed up yesterday after deleting iZip... Be forewarned everyone.

Deletion of iZip worked for me. Thank god.

Deleting rpg game Vay solved my backup error. In case someone else has that installed.

By changing the USB port to which my iPhone was connected/tethered, I solved the issue of not being able to backup the iPhone through iTunes because it disconnected.

worked for me, thanks!