itunes could not back up the iPhone because an error occurred

If anyone finds this useful. I fixed this issue on my mac by simple turning the phone off, and then holding POWER + HOME to do a hard reboot of the phone.
Afterwards, it backed up fine even using a non original apple cable.

Hello digi geek,

I was looking into the issue you are experiencing and in my research I found a great article for troubleshooting issues with backing up your iOS device. It's called iOS: Troubleshooting backup issues in iTunes and can be found here: http://support.apple.com/kb/ts2529

Start here, and use the rest of the troubleshooting if need be:

Resolution

Simply restarting the computer and the iOS device may resolve a backup issue. After restarting, attempt to restore again. Learn how to restart your iOS device.

To perform the rest of steps in this article, you need to be logged in to the computer as an administrator. If you're not sure if you have administrator access, contact the owner of the computer or the system administrator.

All the best,

Sterling

this is usually an issue with a corrupt photo. delete as many phot's as you can from you iphone that have been taken since the last back up - get rid of all teh ones you dont want first from you camera roll and phot stream. works every time i have this issue

Hello I really am quite stuck as I have done all of the points to include:

Turning on airplane mode

Logging on as an administrator on the PC

Deactivating Antivirus

Restarting the device and PC

2 lengthy calls with Apple via EE

Visiting the Genius Bar

Oh and to top it off, my phone can see the WiFi everywhere I am yet I am unable to access it which is apparently 'an issue Apple have not seen before' - So this means my last backup to the cloud was quite a few weeks ago.

Are there any other gems you can offer or do I have to send my phone and lose everything that I need to download to be able to recieve a replacement?

Thank you

Intllady, I am having the exact same problem as you. Have you figured anything out? I haven't met anyone who has had the same trouble with their iphone 5 as I have. I am starting to think mine is just a piece of crap. It won't sync with my computer because of an "error" and it wont connect to any wifi even though I know the passwords are correct. It always just says "incorrect password." Also, it says I have no storage when I have no music or apps on my phone. Please let me know if you've figured anything out!

I have an iPhone 4 and could not update to iOS7 because I was getting the "iTunes could not backup the iphone because an error occurred" message. The phone did update in the iCloud, and had updated 10 days earlier on the computer.

Finally, I deleted some pictures I had in an app that keeps files under lock. Apparently iTunes was trying to backup those photos and was not able to, probably due to the app's security features. After doing this, the backup was completed, and so was the iOS update.

Ive had the same problem again

as per my previous post, I deleted a load of photos - i figured there was a corrupt file that would not back up. this worked back in July but not when i tried to back up prior to installing ios7

however, i found a new method to solve this problem.

plug in to itunes. go to photo's in itunes. tick the boxes for "selected albums, events and faces" but then untick all alblums and click on "apply".

This will remove all the albums from your phone, but the photo's are still on your computer.

then do a back up.

after that you can go back to the photos tab and reselect all the albums if you want them back on your phone.

ITunes could not back up the IPhone because an error occurred.

I got the same error when backing up via iTunes or iCloud. In my case, there were some applications in weird status and that caused the problem. When checking applications on Settings > General > Usages > Manage Storage, there were (null) named applications which couldn't be deleted there. So I searched those applications on AppStore, downloaded them again, and tried to delete but they couldn't be even installed properly. After deleting them on Manage Storage menu, backup has worked.

This is my fix.

My problem was caused by a dummy app, I removed it through iPhone's SETTING, GENERAL, USAGE, MANAGE USAGE.

Look for empty app name or blank icon. Remove the app.

Try to backup again, if fail again, check for the LOG of your iTunes.

For Windows, go to

a) C:\Users\XXXXXX\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\Logs

b) Open the log, and see what's the problem. For my case there problem was

[11132 @ Fri Oct 09 21:27:23 2015] [com.apple.console AppleMobileBackup.exe] ERROR: Backup message response: 101 Unable to open domain directory: No such file or directory (2) at path "/var/mobile/Containers/Shared/AppGroup/8E726549-3ED1-4171-818A-12B66843C156" (MBErrorDomain/101)

c) For my case, this App " 8E726549-3ED1-4171-818A-12B66843C156 " caused the problem. So I just browse into my iPhone's directory using iExplorer, and create a folder with the same name. Note: My iPhone is jailbroken.

Then I manage to backup my phone.

Note: If you see similar error message, thats mean it's caused by an APP. Just try to delete more app and try to backup again.

Good Luck!

For me it worked out by figuring out the crash files going to C:\Users\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\Logs\CrashReporter\MobileDevice

After figuring the crash files responsible from the crash reporter, i deleted the apps from where the crash files came and was able to back up after that

Thanks to luckywizard I found the solution to the problem of not being able to back up my iphone 4S because of an error.

In order to detect the source of the error go to C:/users/"current user profile name"/AppData/Roaming/Apple Computer/Logs
Here open the latest log in notepad, here is what I saw there (In Windows computer):

[10412 @ Thu Dec 17 09:00:43 2015] [com.apple.console AppleMobileBackup.exe] ERROR: Backup message response: 100 open_dprotected_np error: Operation not permitted (1) at path "/var/mobile/Containers/Shared/AppGroup/7BA0AB2E-9176-4B39-99F4-FA513A36DF50/Li brary/Preferences/group.net.whatsapp.WhatsApp.shared.plist.73vSj78" (MBErrorDomain/100)

In my case in meant the database of the Whatsapp application seems to have been corrupted in some fashion. I deleted Whatsapp app from my iphone and the back up of my iphone 4S worked seamless again after 6 months of not backing up.

I don't know why apple is so ignorant of such a basic problem. They should make itunes show the source of the problem in error pop up warning message so that people can solve problem easily. I liked apple products for being less time consuming and easy but I am having more and more such problems.

If you are one of the many having this problem, this might be the ultimate solution for you.

My iPhone 6 Plus has been really sluggish in the last few days so I wanted to backup, Erase all content and settings then restore. iCloud backups were failing, and I got the error mentioned here when trying to make an iTunes backup.

I had something like 5500 photos and videos so I downloaded all these to my Mac using Image Capture and removed them from the phone - backups now work fine again and the sluggishness has gone. So I guess my phone objected to nearly running out of space.... I pushed all the photos/videos to my Google Drive account.

i have solved this on iphone 7, erase all contents and setting, then restore from back up BINGO!