Mail backup folders corrupted

I have been trying to restore my mail folders with Time Machine (total 10G or so). The actual restoration goes fine but the folders seem to have been corrupted in some way so when Mail is restarted it insists on re-importing all my mail. This process takes hours and invariably fails (Mail crashes out and on re-launch tries again to import and again fails after a couple of hours).
This seems to leave me having lost all mail for the last month (back to the last proper backup made with a normal backup utility), which is frankly pretty disastrous!
Does anyone have any suggestions as to how to recover the mail? I have re-restored several times both manually and with TM, and also overwritten the Mail prefs files. Is there any way to make TM restore the Mail folders properly so I just get back to the Mail status some hours ago, as Time Machine says it does?
I wonder if the corruption is because TM is trying to offer a single-message restore facility - I am not sure if I can turn this off so as to get a normal backup.
All help appreciated! I thought I was well-protected but I seem not to be!

Well in case it helps anyone there seems no way to get things back. Even a full system restore does not work - the (119,000) messages still need 'importing' and this still fails.
It is very frustrating that restoring a few (like the last month's) messages from within mail still fails - the messages can be seen and even read but not restored - TM eventually (an hour or so) freezes. This may be because the 'inbox' of a few hours ago shown in the TM window is not in fact this - it contains a massive 69,000 messages going back several years and takes 20m to load instead of only the last few months as it should.

Similar Messages

I just got my refurb iPad in the mail. I am trying to set it up, but im getting this message "iTunes could not back up the ipad because the backup was corrupt or not compatable with the ipad. Delete the backup for this ipad. then try again." How?

I just got my refurb iPad in the mail. I am trying to set it up, but i am getting this error message " iTunes could not back up the ipad because the backup was corrupt or not compatable with the ipad. Delete the backup for this ipad. Then try agian." How do I do that?

It sounds like the iPad wasn't erased to me. If the iPad is totally cleared of content, there should be nothing on it and no backup to create.
Without connecting the iPad to your computer - Launch iTunes on you computer and go to Edit>Prefences>Devices. Do you see an iPad backup in there? If you do see it, delete it.

Mail backup on Mountain Lion clean install

I'm installing a new SSD in my Mac Pro and want to set it up as a clean install of ML so not from a previous TM Backup.
I only want copy the whole of mail - with all the mailboxes and filters intact and without having to set this up again.
Any help in how I do this would be really appreciate.
Thanks in advance, Matt

This will be a lot easier if you make a secondary backup using something like Carbon Copy Cloner. (That's good practice anyway... relying on one single backup isn't all that safe overall. I've seen plenty of people who only discovered their one-and-only backup was corrupt once they needed it, or who did something wrong in the restore process and destroyed it.)
Then, when you're ready to restore Mail, you need the following folders from the backup:
Users/yourusername/Library/Mail/
Users/yourusername/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail/
Move those folders from the backup to the same location on the new system. The difficulty will be that, in Mountain Lion, the user Library folder is invisible, so what will make your life easier is to run the following command in the Terminal before making your backup with Carbon Copy Cloner:
chflags nohidden ~/Library
(Terminal is in the Utilities folder in the Applications folder.)

I am getting error message "iTunes could not back up the iPhone because the backup was corrupt or not compatible with the iPhone". I have deleted the backup and restarted my computer, but continue to get this error message. What do I need to do now?

I have recently updated my phone and am attempting to sync it. I got the error message "iTunes could not back up the iPhone because the backup was corrupt or not compatible with the iPhone". I deleted the backup, restarted my computer, and even restored the iPhone, but continue to get the same error message. What do I need to do now?

iTunes places the iPhone backup in the following location. Navigate there & delete everything in the backup folder, but not the folder itself. You will have to turn on "Show All Hidden Files & Folders" to see it:
Mac:~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/
Windows XP:\Documents and Settings\(username)\Application Data\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup\
Windows Vista and Windows 7:\Users\(username)\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup\

IPhone backup is corrupted and not visible in ITunes. Can I recover the data on it?

Hi,
I am a Win 7 user. I recently upgraded my iphone 4 from ios 4 to ios 5. It seems that the upgrade process deletes all the data and then it recovers it from ITunes or ICloud backup. I did have only one backup and it was on ITunes. However, during the backup process I had some kind of error telling me that the backup is corrupted or something like that. Unfortunately I didnt pay enough attention to the error in order to quote it here. What happenned next is that the IPhone was stuck on the Conect to ITunes screen even thou it was already connected. Every time I was connecting the Iphone to ITunes, it was syncing, but it kept being stuck on that Connect to ITunes screen. To resolve this, I tried the Restore from a backup option by right clicking on the Iphone in ITunes. There I had only one choice of backup which was with no date. This solved the Connect to ITunes problem and the IPhone was up and running.
The next problem was that once I configured the IPhone, I had no data on it - no pictures, no contacts, no anything apart programs I have downloaded previously from AppStore.
A friend of mine assisted me, and showed me where the backups are stored on win 7 systems:
C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup
My understanding is that you have as many backups as folders in the Backup folder above. I don't see however one of the folders in the ITunes Restore from Backup list. It is the largest and oldest folder - nearly 2GB. All the rest is like 30-40mb. I believe that any chance I may have to restore any information from my IPhone is by restoring this backup and being able to upload it to the IPhone or read it somehow. My friend discovered that the .plist files are missing in this folder. In particular 4 files: info.plist, manifest.mbdb, manifest.plist and status.plist.
We tried to cheat a bit by copying these files from one of the other backup folders. We also renamed some of the codes in one or two of the files, like the name of the folder, data and hour in info.plist. It didnt work. This folder remains unvisible by ITunes and therefore I cannot use it as backup.
Your help is much appreciated for finding a solution on that one,
Peppy

gdgmacguy wrote:
If your backup is corrupted you cannot retrieve data from it.
I've been working on a tool that repairs most iPhone (iPad, iPod Touch) backups that iTunes reports as corrupted -- it seems to be working fairly well for people we've had using it lately! If someone stumbles on this post and wants to try it out, the program is Decipher Backup Repair, and you can try it here:
http://deciphertools.com/download-decipher-backup-repair.html
As other people in the thread have mentioned, you can also try some third-party programs to read the backup and pull-out the important data so you at least have it in some capacity. We have one on the website I've linked above, in addition to the repair software.
I hope this helps someone who finds this thread! Dealing with iTunes backups can be really painful, and I know it's horribly depressing to wait through a restore to get the corrupted message after SEVERAL minutes.
(Note: As I mentioned, I work on the backup fixing software I linked to, so I stand to benefit, financially or otherwise, from the links I've provided.)

Mac Mail Smart Folders triplicate messages (Gmail-based mail server)

I can't get Mail Smart Folders to work well with my Virginmedia mail server, which seems to use a Gmail type of system. (I'm using IMAP).
It is easy to set up an instruction to select mail e.g. from defined individuals only, or any other qualifier.
However, I get all mail in triplicate: from the normal Inbox, but also from Gmail-type "All Mail" and "Important" inboxes. I know these mailboxes exist on the Virginmedia server, and also, virtually, in Mail, but I don't ever look at them or need to. There might be a way of not having all mails defined as "Important" on the server, but "All Mail" exists by default and can't be removed, for obvious reasons.
I have tried various additional instructions in the Smart Folder such as include if "Message is in Inbox", but that selects all messages. Also, if "Message is not in Inbox", so that I get only two sets of messages, but that has produced strange results such as messages marked as in Spam folder, which seem to have nothing to do with the defined instructions.
Is there anything "smart" I can do about this, or is it just a matter of Mail not being up to speed with Gmail-based servers. It's just an annoyance, more than anything.

Nope. Gone.
I went to my second mac. Opened Mail, it refreshed its previous state, with 1100 messages in the Inbox, I was relieved and while thinking about my backup options, Mail started its new activity cycle and POOF....Gone. One test message in the Inbox.

I lost mail smart folders on iMac after delete them on Mac Air

I lost mail smart folders on iMac after delete them on Mac Air with differents mail accounts.
I don't undestand, I have email accounts totally differents between iMac and Mac Air, I don't know if is an iCloud issue.
When I open Mail on Air I see a lot of smart folders I use on iMac and I thinked of a some old sync mismatch, so I deleted smart folders on Air.
Today when I turn on my iMac I see I lost ol my smart folders, but are differents computers, differents email accounts, one used for work the other at home (gmail).
Of course I have time machine backup but don't know how to restore smart folders.
Please help me, I don't want smart folders be synced beetween differents accounts
I attach my iCloud settings...

I don't know the answer to your question, but smart folders do not actaually contain messages, just links to messages from other folders. So nothing has actually been lost. Once you recreate the smart folders, you'll see the same mail inside them that you did before.
Matt

3.6TB of Backup Folders on 500GB TM drive??

Can anyone explain how the TM backup database can create 19 backup folders of ~200GB each on an external HD that is only 500GB? The top level folder shows a size in the finder window and the Get Info window of 3.6TB! What's going on??

That's the "smoke and mirrors" Time Machine uses, to be able to only back up what's changed, but have each backup be, in effect, a full one!
See [How Time Machine works its Magic|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/Works.html].
By the way, be +*very careful+* using the Finder or Terminal on your backups; if you accidentally move, change, or delete things that way, you can corrupt them.

I am syncing my ipod but it comes up with a error saying itunes could not backup the ipod because the backup was corrupt or not compatible with the ipod, what do i do?

i am syncing my ipod but it comes up with a error saying itunes could not backup the ipod because the backup was corrupt or not compatible with the ipod, what do i do?

As I said the iTunes program on the computer. You open iTunes on the computer and go to the View menue in the upper rightand then click on preferences. Go to Devices and delete the backup.

Iphone: recover photos and contacts when itunes backup is corrupt/not-compatible

Thought it would be useful to share my experience with an iphone restore failure.
Scenario: my friend did an ios update (she has sworn to never do such a thing again based on this experience). The restore failed and her iphone would not boot up. iTunes said we need to restore. She had an iTunes backup (no iCloud backup) that had been used for a previous restore (i.e. a known good backup). When we attempted to restore, we got this:
I googled this problem, and see that we are not the first to experience this. I chatted with Apple Support and conclusion was "start fresh". I found several open-source tools (iPBA2, iphone Analyzer); but while both showed photos from the backup, neither showed contacts.
I copied the iTunes backup directory to my desktop Linux (CentOs) machine. Browsing in the directory (use the GUI file browser, or run "file *|grep JPEG) I could see all the photos. So I uploaded these to DropBox and gave the link to my friend. Result: I consider this a 100% success at recovering the photos.
Using the Linux "strings" command, I found files that looked like they contained contact list. For example, I knew that I (Tucker) was a contact in her list, so I ran something like:
for i in $(ls)
do
strings $i |grep Tucker > /dev/null 2>&1
if [ $? == 0 ]
then
echo found Tucker in $i
fi
This identifed a few likely candidates. For each of these files I then ran:
strings <filename> |more
and simply looked at the output. I found a file that had a bunch of names/phone-numbers. I saved the output to a file, ran some scripts to clean it up a bit, and I had a crude recreation of contacts (at least 1 phone number for each contact). I emailed this list of contacts to my friend, and she can now manually re-enter contacts as she sees fit. I can see this file type is sqlite. I tried various experiments reading this and other files with sqlite3, but did not have any success at finding actual contact info. Result: I consider this a partial success,
There are a number of files in the Backup directory which show up as file type "Adaptive Multi-Rate Codec". These appear to be voicemail messages pushed to the phone. I did not care about these. If you open them in the Linux GUI file browser, you can play them back.
Bottom line: Apple Support said "start over". Reality is, with a little effort, you can get back photos (most important, since these cannot be re-created from scratch), and some contacts (less important, since eventually you can re-create this with a little work). Might be other stuff (calendar, ...etc) that can be harvested if you poke around some more.
My recommendations:
1) Set up your phone for both iTunes and iCloud backup
2) Now assume that both your iTunes and your iCloud backups are corrupt. Do not trust them. The only way (to my knowledge) to see if they are good is to restore them to an iphone. Sort of like buying house insurance, and not knowing if it will pay for your damage until the house burns down. If the backups are good, then fantastic. If they are not good, you will have an alternate strategy.
3) Get a flickr account. Set your iphone to sync photos to flickr. flickr offers everyone 1TB free. I like a backup scheme where you can "see" your backup, and have confidence it is really there.
4) Login to icloud. Export your contacts to a file, and make a copy of file on another machine, or to the cloud (googledocs for example). Maybe you can export other stuff. I didn't really care about this, so no comments on that.
5) If all else fails, dissect files on Linux as described above
Comments/flames welcome.

Iphonebackupextractor for windows xp is a strange piece of software, which lets you extract only one file per session until you pay the registration fee. with "iphone backup extractor" from supercrazyawesome for mac you get the same functionality for free, so I could get her photos/films back. For the contacts you will need a sql-browser, which I had not try yet.

How can I delete an infected file from backup folders

ran Sophos anti-virus recently and it told me I have a malicious trojan on my Mac, Mal/PDFEx-H (which supposedly only affects windows, but it turned up anyway.) Sophos couldn't remove it automatically, so I was instructed to do a manual removal; however, every time I try to delete the file from the backup folders in which it is located, I get a message that "backup files can't be altered."
so, my question is: how do I get rid of some malicious trojan (even though it's only for windows) from my backup folders? Btw, the backup folders in which it is located are all over 2 years old...don't know if that makes any difference, like maybe the entire folders could be deleted without any adverse effects?
thanks for any advice.

E. Kennedy wrote:
thanks for the help!
just wondering why you said that about Sophos? it's a download from Apple's web site and it did catch this, even though it couldn't remove it...
thanks, again!
I think that Linc means (and I concur) you don't need it to protect your Mac and it wastes resources, if it makes you feel better because it alerts you to windows viruses then remove it and install ClamAX or AV or whetever it's called.
But you don't need AV software.

Unable to sync or backup my iPad2 with the new iTunes. I keep getting the error ""iTunes could not back up the iPad because the backup was corrupt or not compatible with the iPad.". I've deleted all the old backups but still get this.

I'm totally frustrated by iTunes and don't know how to solve my problem. Like a lot of people on here I'm not able to sync or back up my iPad2 with my iTunes (version 10.4.1.10). I'm running Win 7 Ultimate 64 bit. My iTunes worked just fine until the 10.4.xx updates came out and since June I've not been able to back up or sync the iPad2.
When I connect and try to sync I get the error message, “iTunes could not back up the iPad because the backup was corrupt or not compatible with the iPad.”
I've deleted all the old backups so there are none on my system. I've deleted iTunes and re-installed the 64bit version several times but it has not made any difference. I've read and followed several suggestions on these boards about how to remove and reinstall everything but none have worked yet. I'm stumped here.

I had the exact same thing with my shuffle - same error message saying that it was corrupt so I restored it (wiping everything in the process) and the same message came up as soon as it reloaded. Thank god I didn't try it with my iPod or iPhone first. So many issues with this new version of iTunes!!!!!!!!

ITunes could not restore the iPhone "___'s iPhone" because the backup was corrupt or not compatible

Ok so bear with me here, it is somewhat of a long story.
I had been using an iPhone 4 for a while, with an old iTunes account that has all my stuff from over the years on it, on my computer. A week ago, I dropped by iPhone 4 in the sink and it got covered with water, despite quickly pulling it out, putting it in rice under a lamp, the phone was shot, and I was without a phone. My Dad, who is on the same AT&T plan with me, was using an iPhone 3. He was available for an upgrade, so he got a new iPhone, and gave me the iPhone 3. Now i'm not an apple master or anything but I have a good idea of what I am doing, normally, I backup my phone to my computer every few months. Basically everytime I plug it in to my computer which isn't very often because I just charge it with the wall charger. So got my SIM card with the same phone number and all, and obviously, while still being my number, it had my dads apps, messages, contacts and photos on it. So I bring it home, and plug it into my computer, I cancel the intial sync, and right click on the phone on the left side of iTunes and hit "restore from backup" I look through the list of backups, and the most recent one I see is from Dec 11, 2011. Which is surprsing because i'm pretty sure I had backed up since then, but I say whatever i'll still get contacts apps and most pictures back etc. So I hit it, and go through with it, and it tells me there was a more recent date of backing up, relieved, I click on that and continue, the normal bar comes up it says something like estimated time 30 minutes, so I walk away, come back 5 minutes later, and I get an error message saying, "iTunes could not restore the iPhone "____'s iPhone" because the backup was corrupt or is not compatible with the iPhone." Confused, I go back and try again, however this time I click on "old backup (the dec 11th one rather than the newer one) and the same thing happens after a few minutes. I go back a third time, and select a time from August of 2011. And I hit restore, and it goes through. However, this happened to be a backup I made right when I got my new iPhone 4, and therefore I basically restored my phone, to having nothing. Thats where I sit right now, with none of my contacts or pictures. I'm not sure if I backed up to iCloud or not and i'm not sure how to retrieve that. Some extra things: When I try to sync my iTunes library and apps onto the new iphone 3, I need to greatly reduce the number of songs and apps beacuse this iPhone is only an 8gb while the old one was 16, (I don't think that is the reason I am getting the error message though because when I sync it clearly says "Your iPhone does not have enough space). Also, this is obviously an iPhone 3, not an iPhone 4, updated with the most recent iTunes software, which, I believe is 5.1.
Any help would be greatly appreciated as I have over 1,400 pictures saved on my old phone (very important things to me) and a contact list of over 300 including important friends, coaches, teachers and workers.
Thank you very much, if it doesn't say my email on here try me at [email protected]
Thanks again
-Drew
Edit: The current phone is an iPhone 3G, not a 3Gs.

ashleyfrg2,
you will need to restore your phone as a new device and NOT from backup. If you've been using your phone as recommended, you should have minimal data loss: Photos should have been imported to your computer right after taking them; contacts should be safe in a cloud service or on your computer. You CANNOT downgrade to 4.3.3.

HT4972 After upgrading iPhone 4 to iOS 5.1.1 getting the error "iTunes could not restore the iPhone because the backup was corrupt or not compatible with the iPhone that is being restored" HELP!

I attempted to upgrade my iPhone 4 to iOS 5.1.1. I selected 'back up' from the phone in the device menu and iTunes confirmed that the phone had been backed up. I then installed iOS 5.1.1 which wiped everything on the phone & now I am getting the error "iTunes could not restore the iPhone because the backup was corrupt or not compatible with the iPhone that is being restored".
I have tried restoring factory settings but iTunes simply will not restore from back up & I'm not sure what else to do!
Any advice would be much appreciated.

I have the same issue and I KNOW my backup IS good. What happen is when you try to restore your phone apple says something like can I check for new updates and if you choose no, it just takes you back to the restore screen and a loop from then on. If you dont update from you phone then when you back up you will have the 5.0.1 back up and then when you update to 5.1.1 and then try to restore the backup from 5.0.1 it say it EITHER corrupt or incompatible.. It is incompatible and its hard as **** to restore back to 5.0.1. I followed the restore to a T and still getting errors. I lost all text history and have to reset up email. All just because I wanted a 1.2 Gigs of "other" space back.

I have the current version of itunes, but when I go to update my ipod, I am getting an error message that says that it could not back up because the backup was corrupt or not compatible with the iPod. This is the first time trying to backup.

I have the current version of itunes, but when I go to update my ipod, I am getting an error message that says that it could not back up because the backup was corrupt or not compatible with the iPod. This is the first time trying to backup the iPod. I have authorized my computer. Still no luck.

Go to iTunes>Preferences>Devices and select the iPod backjp and click on delete and try again.
Also
- Reboot the computer
- Try another cable
- Try another USB port

Mail backup folders corrupted

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for