Restoring from backup on external drive?

[Gmas]

I was having serious issues with my phone and decided to move my most recent iPhone backup from my Macbook HD onto an external drive - I wanted to try and create a new fresh backup on my Macbook HD, but wanted to preserve that good backup that was made pre-phone-issues just in case the new backup retained the issues. It ended up not even being able to create a new backup.

At this point my phone is almost unusable and I think I'm going to need to wipe it clean. My question is will I be able to wipe it clean and then restore from the backup that I moved (copied) onto my external? I seem to be reading and hearing different things, but it's sounding like moving that backup folder to an external was bad and could create issues.

Anyone have any experience with this?

 

[TrueBlou]

Yeah, moving the backups isn't always a good idea, it can cause problems. You don't need to move them anyway. iTunes maintains the older backups and lets you choose which one you'd like to restore from. No harm in making a backup of the backup, but definitely keep the originals where they are.

Maybe try putting the old backup back to its original location, quit and restart iTunes and see if it's back to normal before you do anything else.

If it doesn't work, you may need to start editing or restoring old iTunes library files. Which can be a mine field.

 

[lebronhuo]

You did the wrong thing. You should directly backup your phone on an external drive rather than moving the backup.
Because when you move the backup you tousle the directory area and the data area, so that computer cannot read the data correctly.