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There are a handful of errors you might get when a backup is corrupt.
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Photos taken by a recent iPhone are typically a few megabytes each, and a typical backup could be north of 30GB. iPhone Backup Extractor will do this automatically for you. For example, running out of disk space in the middle of a backup, having a hard-drive fail (or Dropbox eating your files!), an iOS upgrade going wrong, or a power failure during the backup can each affect the backup in different ways.Ī good way to sanity check whether there's a decent amount of data in a backup is to check how large the folder is. Encrypted corrupt backups are trickier, especially if the "manifest files" are missing, as these describe how data in the backup was encrypted, and are essential for the decryption process.īackups can be corrupted to different extents. It's usually straightforward to recover data from an unencrypted corrupt iTunes backup. Trying - and failing - to restore the backup using iTunes is another indicator. If iPhone Backup Extractor doesn't recognise the backup, labels it incomplete, shows no available data, or suggest the backup was created a very long time ago - like ! - then it's likely there's a problem with the backup. It'll show your backup's status: if it says "Complete and encrypted" or "Complete and unencrypted" that's a good sign.
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The easiest way is to install the free version of iPhone Backup Extractor, and load your backup in it. How to tell if your iTunes backup is corrupt You've got a great chance of recovering corrupt backups automatically with iPhone Backup Extractor. Recovering data from a corrupt iTunes backup is difficult but not impossible, and messages like "backup is corrupt or not compatible with your iPhone that is being restored" don't mean your data is "irreversibly lost".
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