I was using an iPhone 4S (iOS 9). The phone is destroyed. I have an iTunes local backup (not iCloud). I am going back to an iPhone 3GS (iOS 6).
iTunes says something like "can't restore because your phone is too old".
The OS on the 3GS cannot be upgraded, and the 4S cannot be used at all.
How can I get this backup restored onto the 3GS?
iPhone 3GS, iOS 6.1.6
You can't. You can not restore a backup made on a device running a newer version of iOS to a device running an older version.
You can't. You can not restore a backup made on a device running a newer version of iOS to a device running an older version.
KiltedTim is right, you have to connect a newer iPhone running iOS9 and then you can backup. If you restore from backup, your iPhone needs the newest iOS Version,
Actually you can restore parts of the backup using a 3rd party application such as iBackupbot, it works on Mac and PC download link here ; http://www.icopybot.com/itunes-backup-manager.htm
Thanks, all. Yes, you're right. Frustrating: backups are backups, why can't owner get at them? The third party applications (as far as I could tell) ask for money to actually restore things.
Apparently the difficulty is that Apple is taking care to keep these things secure, and so they're not trivial to parse:
http://www.securitylearn.net/tag/parsing-iphone-backups/
Wish Apple could do a little more in iTunes to allow users access to the backups; encouraging this proliferation of get-your-data-for-a-fee applications ("that's a really nice window you've got there, wouldn't want to see it get broken") doesn't inspire confidence.
Restore from 4s phone to 3gs
