Apple - How to resolve "iTunes could not back up the iPhone because the backup was corrupt"?

From within iTunes navigate to the menu iTunes > Preferences > Devices. Select the backup file, then hit the delete button:

It's somewhat (sadly) common to run into this "Corrupt/Incompatible" error. Most of the time the backup is just a little bit buggy.

I work on a program called Decipher Backup Repair, which scans the backup and shows you/fixes the errors so you can restore in iTunes.

http://deciphertools.com/decipher-backup-repair.html

Here's an article I wrote with a few other things to try first as well:

https://deciphertools.com/blog/fix-iphone-backup-corrupt/

From that link, you can also poke around to learn more about corrupt backups if you want.

(Note: As I mentioned, I am the author of the software I'm recommending above, so I stand to benefit from my recommendations. I definitely stand behind our software :) but I like to put a little note like this anyway!)

I had the same problem, no idea where it came from. I had a jailbroken iPhone 3G and switched to a non-jailbroken iPhone 4, i.e. I transferred the backup to the new phone, which worked. Some time later, however, I got that error message. I tried the solution above, I even deleted all backups, even the ones not related to that phone, but the error persisted.

I found a solution in a comment to the thread iPhone could not backup because backup file was corrupt or not compatible, fix, more details in a following comment. Here’s what to do, summarized:

(This is a solution for Windows (7), which doesn’t apply to the OP, but his problem seems to have been solved already at any rate.)

• Close iTunes
• Make sure your Explorer displays hidden files
• Go to C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computers\MobileSync\backup
• Delete everything there (or move it somewhere else, to be on the safe side)

And done. In my case, I deleted two folders with long, cryptic, alphanumeric names, one empty, the other over 1GB in size. When I opened iTunes again, I could create a brand new backup without any errors.