Restore an iOS 6 backup to iOS 5.1.1?

tmanchester · Oct 30, 2012

I got sick of iOS6, and after backing up to itunes, finally managed to downgrade back to 5.1.1 via redsnow. But now when I try to restore the 6 backup to 5.1.1, itunes says it is too old. Was just wondering if there was any way to get around this, I've tried changing values in the backups .plist file with no luck, I was told to do this in lots of forums but I think it's only for <6.0. Thanks in advance.

willerz2 · Oct 30, 2012

You'll need to manually rip the backup piece by piece and see which pieces are compatible. You can restore backups from older iOS to newer iOS but not from newer iOS to older iOS. I believe iCloud is also no help at all in your situation unfortunately since it detects the older backup's iOS and the current iOS.

tortelliniguy · Oct 30, 2012

Here's a tutorial to do so.

http://www.iphoneforums.net/forum/s...-2-firmware-too-old-restore-backup-fix-30383/

tmanchester · Oct 31, 2012

tortelliniguy said:
Here's a tutorial to do so.

http://www.iphoneforums.net/forum/s...-2-firmware-too-old-restore-backup-fix-30383/

I've tried this, this was the only way I found when searching, but Apple seem to have 'fixed' this for iOS 6, as when I try it iTunes says the backup is corrupt.

willerz2 said:
You'll need to manually rip the backup piece by piece and see which pieces are compatible. You can restore backups from older iOS to newer iOS but not from newer iOS to older iOS. I believe iCloud is also no help at all in your situation unfortunately since it detects the older backup's iOS and the current iOS.

I tried upgrading back to 6, copying all the data I needed such as the SMS database and the Contacts database, then transferred them back to their relevant places in 5.1.1, as this was possible with earlier versions of iOS, but Apple must have changed the way the .db files are formatted or something as I had no luck.