[request] Old backup not supported

[Ingenieur-odo]

Trying to extract photos from a very old backup from 2012.

Got the response that backup 2.4 is not supported. Is this possible to fix?

[joz-k]

@Ingenieur-odo : The reason I implemented the backup version check is the fact, that I don't have such old backups available for testing. But the very first version of this tool does not check for a high enough version. Perhaps you can try it and if the result is somehow satisfactory, I can implement an --ignore-version-check option.

https://github.com/joz-k/ios_backup_extractor/releases/tag/v1.2.0

Also, don't be afraid to try the old version of this tool. This tool since the first version has a strict policy of never modifying anything inside the archive itself. So even if it fails spectacularly, your archive will not be corrupted.

[Ingenieur-odo]

@joz-k Thanks for the quick response, makes sense. I tried the old version of the tool as you recommended, and it does seem to find the old backup when running the --list command (which the newer version didn't do).

When trying the output command for extraction, it says the following:

I created a folder name Backuptest on my Desktop and tried both the full path and only "Backuptest" as in your example. The same response is given if I try a newer backup, so it seems to have more to do with the output path.

Any recomemndation on how to solve it? Am I doing anything wrong?

[Ingenieur-odo]

Addition: when I'm running the exact same command on the newer version of the program I don't get the directory error, only the backup version error mentioned before.

[joz-k]

@Ingenieur-odo : The tool expects that the "Backuptest" directory already exists. But I suppose (and you even mentioned it) that you created such a directory beforehand. At this point I can suggest to add the --verbose parameter to see if the output reveals anything to help with the investigation.

[Ingenieur-odo]

@joz-k Thank you.

Seems like it's not the output directory that is the issue. Running the --verbose parameter shows that it's looking for a path within the backup folder that it cannot find.

Any ideas?

[joz-k]

@Ingenieur-odo : Thanks, this is useful. The first warning is recoverable. The application cannot find the "Photos.sqlite" file, which is needed for certain features but not essential. Unfortunately the "Error" message now makes sense to me. Most likely there is a missing "Manifest.db" file that should be located in the root of the device backup directory. And this file is absolutely critical. Maybe you can go to the individual "device backup" subdirectories in C:\Users\Dell\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup\ and report what kind of files are present in the root folder of those backups.

[Ingenieur-odo]

@joz-k Cool.

I checked a few of the backup files available and there are three Manifest files in each backup subdirectory:
Manifest.mbdb
Manifest.mbdb.bak
Manifest.plist

Is this helpful?

[joz-k]

@Ingenieur-odo : Thank you. Everything is clear now. There is a missing Manifest.db file because an older version of the backup contained Manifest.mbdb instead.

https://www.theiphonewiki.com/wiki/ITunes_Backup#Manifest.mbdb

Apparently this is an older and proprietary format of the backup file index that was later replaced by the SQLite Manifest.db. Unfortunately, I don't have any examples of an iOS backup with an older Manifest.mbdb, so I can't easily implement a parser for it. It seems that you will have to find an extractor that also implements this older format. Unfortunately, this tool cannot help you at the moment.

[alexschubi]

Hey @Ingenieur-odo, did you find a free tool to extract the old backups?