Not Enough Space on iPhone to Restore Backup

This sounds a lot like a corrupt backup. The other has been growing, and I would say it has grown beyond the iPhones size and your only option is to restore the iPhone as new.

However, good news does exist. There is a program which can grab your contacts, messages, calendar, voicemails, and notes directly from the backup. Pictures look a litle harder.

If you download this program http://www.macroplant.com/iexplorer/

This program is also recommended on OSX daily and is one of the very few programs which will let you transfer music from your iPhone to your computer.

For your purposes here though, it is going to be the best solution.

Good luck.

Hi there,

You said " - space that stayed full despite deleting almost all data from the phone"

Did you MANUALLY delete the data from your phone, or did you go to

General > Reset > Erase all Content and Settings ??

Anyway - I've seen this problem with the "Other" file getting very large - up to 20 GB. It was VIDEOS stored on the phones hard drive - NOT in the Camera Roll, but by another third party app. Deleting the app (it was VLC) deleted all of the data associated with it - in this case many many videos that had been viewed on web sites.

That being said - It's easy to check on your phone to see which apps are using up the most space in your memory:

Go To: Settings > General > Usage

This page lists all of the apps that are on your phone,and shows you how much space each is using. It shows 10 apps, and at the bottom of the list is an option to "Show all Apps." In addition, they are listed in order of the amount of storage space they are using.

If you select each individual app by clicking on the ">" beside it, the next page shows the info for just that app, including the name, version, App size, and amount of storage space used by Documents and Data associated with it. You also have the option there to Delete the App.

You, however, will have to check the backup you created to see where all the data is. Ogen23 recommeded iexplorer to retrieve your contacts etc. But if you want to know where all the data was I personally like iBackupBot. Check it out at http://www.icopybot.com/itunes-backup-manager.htm

You can download it as a trial version. When using it you will see a nag screen asking you to Register the product, with the Option to "CANCEL" or "OK". Clicking CANCEL closes the nag screen and shows you the data you want to see.

Good luck.

Hi crimsonium123,

Actually, you CAN use iBackupBot to delete files.

In the case of SMS Attachments (I agree, this is a bug) , using iBackupBot:

1. Open the Media Folder (looks like a film strip)

2. Click on the Export icon

3. The Dialog box title "Export Media Files" appears, and lists the 5 file types that are in the Media Folder (Camera Roll, Multimedia Messages, Voice Memos, Voicemails, and Others)

4. Co-incidentally, the first four are checked by default, but Others is not. The SMS Attachments happen to be in the "Others" Folder !

5. Uncheck everything else, and Check Others.

6. Export the Files to a New Folder you have created for this purpose (I always put it on the Desktop for easy access later)

7. Now, open the Folder on the desktop, and delete files at will !

8. Close the Media Browser in iBackupBot.

9. Select the "Import files that exported before" icon in the Menu Bar.

10. Select your folder that you deleted the SMS from.

11. Now, you can restore your phone using the backup without all the SMS attachment in it.

I use iBackBot almost daily. Fabulous program. Although you already found a workaround, the next time you want to clean up the Other from your phone, you can refer to this.

Glad to have been of assistance.

Diane

Hi Dianes Logic,

I m somewhat in a similar situation where Im trying to restore my iphone and the Itunes backup size has mysteriously increased to a size too big to restore to my iphone. I m trying to get rid of some large video files in my backup which were there in my camera roll at the time the backup was done. I do not have any attachments to get rid of and I ve never setup my email or mms on my phone. So i thought getting rid of a large video file would do the trick .

I followed what you said till step 8(except that I selected 'Camera Roll') but then when I 'Select the "Import files that exported before" on the menu bar' I am only able to select a .info file for some reson and not a media folder as you said. Is there something Im doing wrong .

Also could you please advise me if Im in the right direction as all I want to achieve is to be able to restore from an older backup which I m not able to do as itunes gives me the error ' there is not enough space on your iphone'. So I thought removing a 1.7 gb video file from the backup would help.

Thank you.

Thanks for the reply crimsonium123

I was able to replace the 1.7gb file with your instructions with another 100mb file(i could not just delete the file as it said it could not find the path when i tried to import it back selecting the .info file)so i just put the 100 mb file in the folder that the 1.7gb file was and renamed it and then imported it.Then I tried to restore the iphone directly through ibackupbot and got the error (-36)(same error I was getting before making any changes to the backup).The phone acted just like it does with itunes saying 'restore in progress' for 5 seconds and then reebooting itself. Could not find any info on the error so i just made the changes to the original backup and tried to restore through itunes and still got the not enough space error.I replaced about 5gb with these 5 files of 100mb each which should have freed up 4.5gb but still got the error..

I seem to be able to edit the backup but still failing at the last restore step for some reason.

thanks again for your help.

Hi Random08,

sorry - I didn't get around to reading your message - but crimsoniums reply was correct . My apologies for getting those instructions wrong. That works for SOME files - but crimsoniums method is a better solution.

THAT being said - if you navigate to your Backup folder, select the Backup that has the offending file in it, and then "Sort by Size" - you should have no problem finding the offending file.

This very thing happened to me once. I have a file that was over 5 GB. So - what I did was create another folder in the MobileSync directory (named it "5 GB file from Oct 20 Backup") and drug that sucker into it. Just in case it IS something I want to hang on to.

So now it was no longer in the Backup. I restored my phone using the Backup MINUS THAT BIG FILE. It worked. You could give it a shot. A work of caution. I ALWAYS create 2 backups before performing such tasks. I also change the names of the Backup Files for easier reference at a later date. (Dianes iPhone - Feb 12 - 8 AM).

And thanks, crimsonium, for handling that!

Random08 - I should add - when you RESTORE use iTunes - not iBackupBot.

Diane

Dianes Logic

I followed your steps and when I got to #10. Select your folder that you deleted the SMS from.

It is telling me "No items match your search"

What am I doing wrong?

Thanks

I am having this same problem with my wife's iPhone 5. We had to have it replaced due to a cracked screen so I ran one final backup before heading to the Apple store. Once we got the new phone and tried to restore the backup, it kept telling us the backup is too large to be restored.

I've downloaded iBackupBot and found the same problem... her phone had accumulated over 15 GB of SMS attachment files!

Where I'm having trouble, though, is actually getting them off of the backup. I can't seem to get it to work how it has been explained here.

If I export the files to a folder, then delete the original files but keep the .info files to import back into iBackupBot, then the application doesn't let me import it back because it says the original file does not exist.

So I tried exporting the files and keeping them in the folder whilst importing the .info files back into iBackupBot. The import went fine, but it seems as though the original files still exist in the backup, unedited.

crimsonium123, what was the Applescript you used to fix your problem? This is the only thing I have not yet tried from this thread because I have never done it before so I don't know how.

We have thousands of pictures and video of our 10 month old daughter on this backup that we are dying to get back onto my wife's iPhone. However, these 15 GB of SMS attachment files are keeping this from happening! I envy any more advice on how to remedy this situation.

Thanks!

I'm in the same boat. There are over 6,000 files in the SMS attachments folder! Got any pointers for creating the AppleScript?

Hi!

I pretty much have the same problem as bdub and am desperately trying to follow your instructions to remove about 20 SMS attachments files from an old backup in order to be able to backup a reset iPhone.

Basically I have no clue what I'm doing here but I seem to get stuck trying to create replacement files for the info-files I've exported.

How do I go about to do this more precisely? Haven't got a Mac, so do I create an empty Word-file instead? And how do I change the filenamne do get it to work? I did first attempted to use Notepad and name the original file X and then simply pasting the info-file's name when doing "save as". But when I try to import this file (after the original info file had been deleted) backupbot won't accept the file.

What am I doing wrong?

Thanks!