Any Apple experts out there?

[Big Worm 1]

I'm trying to figure out an issue that my friend is having with restoring his phone. He keeps getting this error message - "itunes could not backup the iphone because an error occurred while reading from or writing to the iphone"

He's taken an encrypted backup of the phone via iTunes and saved it to a portable hard drive. The phone has been reset and now he can't restore it with his backup.

He doesn't have a lot of free space on his laptop (it's old with only a 300Gb hard drive) due to the backup files in the folder Apple Computer>Mobilesync>Backups.

I'm guessing that because the backup he needs is encrypted, there will be some sort of encryption mechanism that needs to work between the backup files on the portable hard drive and the ones in the Apple folder on his laptop? If so, that means he doesn't have enough space left to do the restore? I'm totally guessing here!

So if he gets say a 1Tb laptop hard drive, puts an image of his laptop put on it and installs it in his laptop, there should then be enough space to do the restore?

Or does anyone have any other suggestions of how to do it?

He's panicking because it contains all his wedding photos, honeymoon, kids being born/growing up, etc. Oops!!

[colin79666]

Got another usb cable to the phone? Also go direct, not through a hub. I’ve seen this many times with crap cables.

[vaud]

If he has his iCloud activated then he can at least backup his photos with no risk

[Big Worm 1]

colin79666 said:

Got another usb cable to the phone? Also go direct, not through a hub. I’ve seen this many times with crap cables.

A different cable was the first thing that he tried.

He had to use a separate hard drive because the one on his laptop doesn't have enough space.

[Big Worm 1]

vaud said:

If he has his iCloud activated then he can at least backup his photos with no risk

No it's too late for that because the phone has already been wiped. He backed it up through iTunes, then wiped the phone. Now he can't get the backup back onto the phone.

[vaud]

Ahh sorry misunderstood.

Yes more space might help, though I would try a new cable first.

[tomwattz]

I think its the same issue I encountered before. Reason I got the error because of the low storage my laptop has where the itunes is located. I've used another laptop and put the backup file and it worked.

[Burwood]

Big Worm 1 said:

I'm trying to figure out an issue that my friend is having with restoring his phone. He keeps getting this error message - "itunes could not backup the iphone because an error occurred while reading from or writing to the iphone"

He's taken an encrypted backup of the phone via iTunes and saved it to a portable hard drive. The phone has been reset and now he can't restore it with his backup.

He doesn't have a lot of free space on his laptop (it's old with only a 300Gb hard drive) due to the backup files in the folder Apple Computer>Mobilesync>Backups.

I'm guessing that because the backup he needs is encrypted, there will be some sort of encryption mechanism that needs to work between the backup files on the portable hard drive and the ones in the Apple folder on his laptop? If so, that means he doesn't have enough space left to do the restore? I'm totally guessing here!

So if he gets say a 1Tb laptop hard drive, puts an image of his laptop put on it and installs it in his laptop, there should then be enough space to do the restore?

Or does anyone have any other suggestions of how to do it?

He's panicking because it contains all his wedding photos, honeymoon, kids being born/growing up, etc. Oops!!

His problem is most likely due to the iTunes version he is running on the 'old' laptop is now incompatible with the iPhone IOS being run. If the phone has been subjected to a hard reset it will automatically load the latest IOS version. If he's desperate there are plenty of Apple gurus out there who will sort it out for a fee. Unless;ess you can get access to his machine/phone it's difficult to diagnose.

[Burwood]

Just a thought- if I've ever had a more difficult issue i've contacted Apple Support by phone. I've never had AppleCare and in many cases it's an issue on an old device. They were happy to help and did solve the problem. Worth a shot

[anonymous-user]

I recommend Cox’s Orange Pippin.