Apple Event: May 7th at 7 am PT

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

Level 1

9 points

iPhone backup corrupt or not compatible

Just wanted to put this out there for others to see.

My 32GB iPhone 5s was completely out of storage space. I had about 12 gb sitting in "other" folder. I read that hte only way to clear "other" was to do a complete system restore, then reload the phone using a backup. I backed up my phone, did a full system restore, went to retrieve the backup and the worst nightmare came true. I received a message that read "backup corrupt or not compatible with iPhone". I searched online for solutions in many of these threads and could not find one. I went into my MobileSync folder on my computer and I could see the backup there,and all the files within it, but it couldn't be loaded onto my phone. I talked to 3 Apple Agents for over 2 hours in total, including a senior agent, and none of them could get my backup back. It was lost for good. I lost all my application data, my password app and all its passwords, and all my photos. I did have the option of restoring to a previous backup, but it was a year old, so would be missing many of these things.

A continued search online took me to DecipherTools. They claimed to be able to repair corrupt iPhone back ups. At first I was nervous. Didn't know if this company was legit or not. I decided to risk it. Bought a key code for $30 online, which is good for 2 repairs, and used it on the corrupt file. Within about 2 minutes it repaired my backup. I restored it to my phone and lost nothing!! It did give me some information about the files that were causing the problem. They were related to Facebook, that's really all I know. And nothing else bad happened to my phone nor my computer.

Anyway, I am sharing this because I couldn't find a solution online and hope that it helps someone else.

iPhone 5s, iOS 8.4.1

Posted on Aug 14, 2015 6:45 AM

23 replies

Nov 16, 2015 7:26 AM in response to C.Court

Thank you C.C! 😁

Dec 3, 2015 6:51 AM in response to C.Court

This is a huge problem. Individual customers, and especially corporate users, depend on reliable backups.

In my own case, every backup and restore is subject to performance issues, including complete failures.

If I was a corporate buyer, I would never purchase products which are so vulnerable to data loss.

Apple, is this being fixed ?

mr.itani

Level 1

0 points

Jan 6, 2016 4:06 AM in response to C.Court

Thank you a lots for sheering this information its really helped me for restore my back up

Jan 11, 2016 4:32 AM in response to C.Court

Hi - I just deleted my Facebook app too and the backup ran straight away - thanks for the tip!

Feb 7, 2016 7:27 AM in response to C.Court

I had a similar problem with my iPhone 6 (iOS 9.2.1) and iTunes (12.3.2)

I tried deleting the previous back-ups, but the problem kept coming back. It got to a point where i could not even backup even after I had deleted the back-ups via iTunes/Preferences/Devices. I had to go into ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup to figure out which was the backup for my iPhone and delete that particular folder. Even then, the problem came back after I had backed up the phone once.

I came across another thread and it got me thinking that it could be a corrupted app that is causing the problem. I went through all the apps on my phone to try to figure out which was the one i had installed recently that may have caused the problem. And then i found it. It was an app that i had installed outside of the AppStore. I figure since Apple curates the apps stringently, it is unlikely (but not impossible) that they would allow one in that might corrupt the ecosystem. So i deleted the offending app, and tried again, and lo and behold, everything worked as it should be!