issues with iPhone backup via iTunes

[tygr6]

I am relatively new to iPhone and iTunes. When I initially purchased my iPhone, I was experimenting with syncing/backups via iTunes. At that time, I created an encrypted backup and tried out the process of recovering via the backup. At the time, I made no note of the password that I used. Now that I actually have my iPhone set up the way I want, I attempted to back it up via iTunes. The sync and backup appear to finish correctly; however, if I attempt to restore via the backup or even attempt to backup without a password, iTunes appears to require the original password that I used for my initial practice sessions. I do not care to actually restore from my original backup and I do not need any of my current backups. But I would like to start with a fresh backup of my phone using a new password or no password. Just to be clear, I have no desire or need to break the encryption on any backup. I only wish to backup the current state of my iPhone and then maintain my backups going forward.

 

[tygr6]

After further testing, I've come to the conclusion if you have used encryption for backups, iTunes will not allow you to start a completely new backup with a new encryption password unless you know the previous password. I've tried installing iTunes on different computers, deleting all previous backups, and trying to backup without a password and have been unsuccessful to date. So it appears that if you ever have used a password to backup your iPhone and you forget it prior to taking off the password protection, the only course of action to create (and restore from) an iPhone backup is to start from scratch with a complete wipe of your phone's settings. But at least you can move music, video, apps, and contacts to your computer first and restore them afterwards.

Except for this quirk of iTunes, I have been generally impressed with Apple products since I recently began using them. It would be interesting to see if the iTunes designers could come up with a reasonable defense for this particular property of iTunes.