the backup is corrupted after deleting some files

[moelbanna-bot]

I made a backup for my iPhone and somehow it was bigger than available storage even after erasing my iPhone so I tried this tool to delete some image folders and and now I get an error that the backup file is corrupt.

[MaxiHuHe04]

That's unfortunate. You probably deleted some system files. The program backs up deleted files separately, but there is no straight-forward way to recover them yet. And the problem is that I have not yet identified which files really need to exist for iTunes to recover a backup.

Did you make a copy of the backup before you deleted the files?

[moelbanna-bot]

yes I made a copy of it
but it's large so I can't restore it anyway

[moelbanna-bot]

any tips on how to delete images safely ?
and after the delete a generated file named "_BackupExplore" , should I keep it or delete it from the backup path?

[MaxiHuHe04]

Okay, that's good. Then you could try it again with a new copy.
The easiest then probably is searching for the largest files in the File Search tab. Type in % in both text boxes, click on Search and sort the table by file size (click twice on Size). Videos and photos should be safe to delete, but if you post a screenshot of the largest files, I could try to make a recommendation of which to delete.

[moelbanna-bot]

here is a screenshot of the file search

[MaxiHuHe04]

The folder _BackupExplorer is where deleted files are moved to. If you have another copy of the backup, you could delete it, but iTunes normally just ignores it.

[MaxiHuHe04]

That looks interesting. How much storage does your phone have and how large is the backup?

I would begin by deleting the first 10 video files (.MOV/.mov, but be sure to keep Photos.sqlite) and try recovering the backup to the phone again. If that is not enough, continue with the .mov files.

[moelbanna-bot]

After erase 12 GB are reserved for system and the remaining is about 52 GB , the backup size is about 56 GB

thank you for your reply.

[moelbanna-bot]

UPDATE:
I have deleted most of the videos and the actual size of the file is reduced to 32 GB but still gets an error that is not enough storage on my iPhone despite having 51 GB free.

[moelbanna-bot]

UPDATE:
so i tried to make a new backup with only 4 images on my iphone to see if deleting them would affect the backup file and it was corrupted after deleting them (btw i'm running ios 17.0.3).
any thoughts?!

[MaxiHuHe04]

Strange. Was it really only .heic/.jpg files you deleted? Are you sure you tried to recover the right backup? Otherwise you could move the other one somewhere else.