Turning off iTunes backup encryption w/o the iPhone

[errand]

I need to turn off the encryption for iTunes to run a recovery program. Is there a way to do that without the device being connected? We lost our voicemails switching providers and need to try to recover them from a backup on iTunes that the program cannot access with an encryption password on it. I don't want to attach the phone in question a risk an auto-synch wiping out the previous back up.

 

[Shirasaki]

In Mac, you can archive the previous backup to prevent it from being overwritten. In windows, you can manually rename backup folder to prevent it from being overwritten.

And, there are programs that can read encrypted backup. However I don’t know if they can help you to recover voicemails.

Regarding to your question in title, there is no way to turn off encrypted backup on your iPhone. But you can turn off encrypted backup on your Mac or windows computer without connecting to your device.

 

[errand]

In Mac, you can archive the previous backup to prevent it from being overwritten. In windows, you can manually rename backup folder to prevent it from being overwritten.

And, there are programs that can read encrypted backup. However I don’t know if they can help you to recover voicemails.

Regarding to your question in title, there is no way to turn off encrypted backup on your iPhone. But you can turn off encrypted backup on your Mac or windows computer without connecting to your device.

How do I archive a previous backup?

 

[Shirasaki]

Here is the step of archiving backup in Mac.

Here is the step of archiving backup on windows.

 

[errand]

OK, thanks!

 

[pulse23]

In Mac, you can archive the previous backup to prevent it from being overwritten. In windows, you can manually rename backup folder to prevent it from being overwritten.

And, there are programs that can read encrypted backup. However I don’t know if they can help you to recover voicemails.

Regarding to your question in title, there is no way to turn off encrypted backup on your iPhone. But you can turn off encrypted backup on your Mac or windows computer without connecting to your device.

How can you turn off encryption of a existing ITunes back up on PC without iphone? Is that possible?
FYI, I do remember my back up password.

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[Shirasaki]

How can you turn off encryption of a existing ITunes back up on PC without iphone? Is that possible?
FYI, I do remember my back up password.

Any help would be appreciated.

AFAIK this is not possible. Once the backup is encrypted, it cannot be decrypted.

 

[Powermax]

Yes it is not possible. The backup is encrypted and iTunes has no option for converting it into a decrypted state. You cannot just "turn off" encryption, that's not how it works.

Your backup is stored ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup so you could make a copy of that folder in order to protect it from being overwritten.

Is it correct that you assume the missing files are no longer on your iphone? then I would say your best bet is to look for a third party program which supports encrypted backups.

OR you could make a new backup for your current state on a different computer (or different user account on the same computer).
Then restore your old encrypted backup to your phone, turn off encryption, make a new backup from the phone containing your old data. Now you have an unencrypted backup.
The last step would then be to restore the previous backup from the different computer/user account.