Cannot restore from backup not enough space on computer

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Level 1

6 points

Cannot restore from backup not enough space on computer

itunes could not restore the iphone "XXX" because there is not enough free space on this computer to save the backup.

I have the backup but during the restore process itunes wants to duplicate it and I don't have enough space on my hard drive nor can I create enough.

I have reset my phone to factory settings and came back to itunes and picked the backup I wanted to restore from and it went to work. After a couple of hours I get the error that there is not enough space to save the backup. I look in my backup directory and see that it's created an additional file with what appears to be a date and time code after the file I'm restoring.

I have removed everything from my computer that I can to an external drive and have even uninstalled some programs but still don't have enough space.

Any ideas?

iPhone 6s, iOS 9.3.1

Posted on Apr 26, 2016 11:34 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Azteczig Author

Level 1

6 points

May 4, 2016 9:18 AM in response to Azteczig

I just thought I would circle back around to this after many conversations to Apple. The people I spoke to didn't have a clue what the additional backup is created and the only solution they had was to go to another computer with itunes and restore from there. I had to move the backup to an external drive and then copy it to the itunes backup location on the new PC.

That is what I did and it worked fine.

Also it sounds like this only happens with PC's, not Mac's.

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Answer 2

turingtest2

Level 10

272,743 points

May 4, 2016 9:38 AM in response to Azteczig

I knew that the restored backup was archived with the date & time of the restore, but I'd assumed that would be done by simply renaming the folder, not making a copy and then deleting the original. 😮

Perhaps the process of making the copy is to check that the entire backup set is still valid and readable. 😕

tt2

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Answer 3

Azteczig Author

Level 1

6 points

May 5, 2016 10:14 AM in response to turingtest2

It doesn't delete the original, just makes the copy. And that was my problem--I didn't have an additional 72GB on my drive for the additional file.

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Answer 4

turingtest2

Level 10

272,743 points

May 5, 2016 11:39 AM in response to Azteczig

Ouch, quite! That's a chunky backup. I guess the original is reused for the new backup that is taken after a successful restore. I'd previously assumed the process was rename backup, restore it, backup device, whereas your experience suggests it is copy backup, restore it, update backup.

tt2

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Answer 5

QWarlock

Level 1

4 points

Sep 1, 2016 3:09 PM in response to Azteczig

So I had this exact same problem and the short story is that it is likely caused by corrupted sectors on your hard drive that are affecting your iPhone backup image. I ran Windows' CheckDisk utility and it repaired a bunch of bad sectors and then this error message went away allowing me to successfully restore my iPhone backup via iTunes.

Here is the longer story:
1) I went to do a backup via iTunes and was prompted to install an updated iOS version, so I clicked OK to proceed.

2) iTunes (fortunately) backup up my iPhone prior to doing the iOS upgrade.

3) The iOS upgrade failed with some error that I don't remember, but I now know it was probably caused by a flakey hard drive.

4) iTunes tried to restore my phone but the restore failed with the error about not enough space on my PC's hard drive.

5) This error about PC hard drive space not being enough made little sense to me given that I'm trying to copy an existing backup over to my iPhone, so why should I need more hard drive space if the backup already exists? Anyways, I went ahead and freed up over 200GB of hard drive space and I still got this error when trying to do a restore.

6) I called Apple Support and they had me try a bunch of things to no avail

7) As a last resort, I tried running Windows' CheckDisk Utility on my PC hard drive, it found numerous bad sectors and some were in the Roaming/Apple Computer/MobileSync/Backup directory where Apple stores your iPhone backups. Amazingly, CheckDisk seemed able to repair these bad sectors despite my having Symantec full disk encryption enabled.

8) I tried doing the iPhone restore again with iTunes and it worked this time! No more error about not enough space and my iPhone seems to work fine now with all of my pictures and content fully restored.

I think this error about not enough space on your hard drive is misleading, in reality it can indicate that something is wrong with your iPhone backup image (or maybe even the iTunes application image). Hopefully a checkdisk or even copying the iPhone backup image to a different computer with a fresh iTunes installation could help. I would suggest copying the backup to a new computer or another hard drive prior to running checkdisk just in case the checkdisk makes things worse or fails. Bad sectors are an indicator that you hard drive is starting to go bad and could fail any time.

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