How to back-up iPhone to iTunes then restore

July 22, 2015 3:25 PM

Should be simple, right,? But I am being thwarted at every turn.

I've got a new SIM for my phone, so need to back everything up before I insert it. I've changed everything on my iPhone to it should be backing up, but when I go to iCloud there is nothing there. I just tried to back it up to iTunes and got the following message:

'iTunes could not back up the iPhone because the backup was corrupt or not compatible with the iPhone. Delete the back up for this iPhone, then try again.'

Except there IS NO BACK UP TO DELETE!!I've tried downloading the iCloud app to my desktop but it won't let me sign in (I have the correct password, it just never gets anywhere)

This is driving me mad!

It's an iPhone 4 and I think it's running IOS7

posted by Dorothea_in_Rome to Technology (4 answers total)

I've got a new SIM for my phone, so need to back everything up before I insert it.

I ... guess there's no good reason not to back up your phone, but I've changed SIM cards without backing anything up a ton of times. It never lost anything, and it didn't even occur to me that was a possibility.
posted by aubilenon at 4:17 PM on July 22, 2015

I had this problem! I had to update the iOS to the current version and then it worked. No idea why it worked or why I tried that. It happened with two different iPhones.
posted by artychoke at 6:27 PM on July 22, 2015

You say you just downloaded the iCloud app to your desktop. Was that a typo? What is the iCloud app?
posted by alms at 6:39 PM on July 22, 2015

A Google search for the exact error message you described in your question ("iTunes could not back up the iPhone because the backup was corrupt or not compatible with the iPhone. Delete the back up for this iPhone, then try again") returns only one result: this question. If you try again and Google the exact phrase shown in the error message, you will likely find some relevant discussion of it.
posted by alms at 7:03 AM on July 23, 2015