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iOS 6 to iOS 7 upgrade - backup not compatible

owen22

owen22

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 26, 2010
25
0
Apologies if this question has been asked lots of times before however I've just spent the last hour searching on here and google and I seem to just be trawling through posts about people having problems with beta versions of iOS7... that's not my problem!

I finally got round to upgrading from iOS6 to iOS7 today and, as I thought you were supposed to do, I backed up my iPhone 4 (model A1332) first.

I downloaded iOS 7.0.4 (11B554a) through iTunes and all seemed fine. However when it had finished installing on my iPhone I selected to restore from the backup I'd just done but it's now telling me that it's not compatible... :mad:

I've still got the backup (I've even since made a back-up of the back-up!) but I really need all my photos, SMSs etc. back urgently.

What can I do?

Thanks for any help you can give!
 
maflynn

maflynn

macrumors Haswell
May 3, 2009
73,447
43,365
You can't go down, only up with iOS, so if you only wanted to play with iOS7 and then revert back to iOS6, you're out of luck - that is if I'm understanding your post.
 
owen22

owen22

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 26, 2010
25
0
Hi,

No that isn't what I'm wanting to do.

I wanted to permanently upgrade to iOS7 but keep my SMSs etc.
 
uhaas

uhaas

macrumors 6502
Aug 31, 2012
409
198
Boston, MA
I always make a fresh complete backup before upgrading.

I checked before upgrading and iTunes told me my backup was corrupt.. I made a fresh one and verified it before the upgrade and all was fine. iTunes, especially on Windows, has corrupted these for me before.

It's a bit of a manual process; I go to the directory where backups are stored and rename the directory for my device and let iTunes create a new one. It seems to straighten it out every time.
 
owen22

owen22

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 26, 2010
25
0
uhaas said:
I always make a fresh complete backup before upgrading.

I checked before upgrading and iTunes told me my backup was corrupt.. I made a fresh one and verified it before the upgrade and all was fine. iTunes, especially on Windows, has corrupted these for me before.

It's a bit of a manual process; I go to the directory where backups are stored and rename the directory for my device and let iTunes create a new one. It seems to straighten it out every time.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I made a back-up literally 5 mins before upgrading to iOS7.

I'm using a MacBook so I've never had a problem with back-ups being corrupted before...

I'll try it again and give the exact error message...
 
maflynn

maflynn

macrumors Haswell
May 3, 2009
73,447
43,365
owen22 said:
Hi,

No that isn't what I'm wanting to do.

I wanted to permanently upgrade to iOS7 but keep my SMSs etc.
Click to expand...

Gotcha, sorry about the confusion. I can't recall when I upgraded if I lost my sms messages, so I'm of no further help for you - sorry
 
owen22

owen22

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 26, 2010
25
0
Lauwie said:
Do you have Xcode? You can restore with Xcode and kick it out of DFU.
Or try to restore using Xcode or itunes and kick it out with this utility :)

http://jaxov.com/2010/05/recboot-iphone-recovery-mode/
Click to expand...

Can't download that as the link says file "has been removed from MediaFire for a violation of our Terms of Service"...

----------

The precise message is:

"iTunes could not restore the iPhone because the backup was corrupt or not compatible with the iPhone that is being restored".
 
uhaas

uhaas

macrumors 6502
Aug 31, 2012
409
198
Boston, MA
owen22 said:
Can't download that as the link says file "has been removed from MediaFire for a violation of our Terms of Service"...

----------

The precise message is:

"iTunes could not restore the iPhone because the backup was corrupt or not compatible with the iPhone that is being restored".
Click to expand...

And that was the error I was getting as well. For me, I was going from a 4S to a 5S at the time. I renamed the backup folder, redid the backup for the 4S and then it restored without a hitch.

It seems to me iTunes makes incremental backups after an initial full. Sometime after weeks or months of doing incremental backups, they get corrupted. To me, it's an iTunes bug.

iCloud backups could potentially be better, but I prefer to backup locally and encrypted so all my passwords restore with data.
 
D

Dented

macrumors 65816
Oct 16, 2009
1,119
899
owen22 said:
Hi,

No that isn't what I'm wanting to do.

I wanted to permanently upgrade to iOS7 but keep my SMSs etc.
Click to expand...

Sorry if I'm missing something - but why would the upgrade to IOS 7 do anything to your SMSs or other data? I agree it's wise to backup first just in case, but generally speaking no IOS update should ever wipe your data. Are you sure anything's actually missing on your upgraded phone?
 
owen22

owen22

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 26, 2010
25
0
Thanks for your help all!

As I can't be without my phone I'd decided to accept defeat...

I still have all my previous SMSs available on my laptop from the back-up I made prior to the iOS update via iExplore (that part of the back-up obviously isn't corrupted).

I still need to extract my photos from the back-up and there seems to be a huge number of software programmes that claim to be able to do this but a lot of them seem to be at least poorly designed, if not scam-ware. I'll seek some trusted advice on here but I'll start a new thread for that...

Everything else is replaceable (or at least re-installable!).

If anyone finds this page in the future the advice I would give is to follow "uhaas" and check that your back-up is working okay *before* you update your iOS. Don't assume it's not corrupted just because, like me, your using a Mac!
 
D

Dented

macrumors 65816
Oct 16, 2009
1,119
899
Really confused by this thread; I still don't understand why you'd be so dependent on an old backup just because you updated your phone.

Not to rub salt in your wounds, I've updated numerous iPhones through 5 major IOS versions (and many more minor updates) without losing a solitary scrap of data. Every text from my 2008 iPhone 3G is still on my IOS 7 ip5 today, and that's nothing to do with the quality of the backups either.
 
owen22

owen22

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 26, 2010
25
0
Dented said:
Really confused by this thread; I still don't understand why you'd be so dependent on an old backup just because you updated your phone.

Not to rub salt in your wounds, I've updated numerous iPhones through 5 major IOS versions (and many more minor updates) without losing a solitary scrap of data. Every text from my 2008 iPhone 3G is still on my IOS 7 ip5 today, and that's nothing to do with the quality of the backups either.
Click to expand...

Yep, up until yesterday I too had text messages, photos etc. going back to 2008 (when i got my first iPhone 3).

I literally did the following:

1) Made a back-up of my phone (iPhone 4 with iOS 6.1.4) through iTunes on my Macbook
2) Downloaded iOS 7.0.4 through iTunes on my Macbook
3) Installed iOS 7 onto my iPhone through iTunes on my Macbook

It then asked my if I wanted to restore my data via a back-up (it's so long since I upgraded from iOS 5 to iOS 6 I can't remember if this is normal...)

I clicked 'yes', and selected the back-up I performed just before installing iOS7. It gets almost all the way along the progress bar, with 'less than one minute' remaining, but then it gives the error message:

"iTunes could not restore the iPhone because the backup was corrupt or not compatible with the iPhone that is being restored"

I click 'OK', the phone reboots itself and I'm left with a blank install, no contacts, no SMSs, no music, no photos... nothing.

I have tried restoring from this backup about 5 times, all with the same error.
 
V

virtues

macrumors newbie
Jan 15, 2015
2
0
jakarta, indonesia
hi owen22, i can understand how painful it is to lost all your data.. this iTunes sucks, and not reliable .. i have this similar problem too..

but i have solution for this and recover all your data back, but you must have samsung android phones with at least 16 GB storage available on internal storage..

here is how i do it, samsung has free software to move data from iphone backups to samsung, it called samsung smartswitch, you can download it free from their website or google it... plug in your samsung phones and choose apple brand and choose the backup available you want to restore..

i got all data back, and i wonder why apple's itunes can't do this but other competitor can read the data from apple's itunes backup perfectly and restore it also to their phones..

i gave samsung two thumbs up for their software... i have thousands of photos inside my iphone... i can't afford to loose them... hopefully this works for you, i know it is very old thread, but i hope you still keeps that iphone backups ...

i'm registering just to inform you hope you read this post... i can't see your email in your profile
 
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