What does the error “iTunes could not restore the iPod ‘NAME’ because the backup could not be saved on the computer.” mean

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My iPod was acting up (the clock was going out of sync, it often became unresponsive to touch) so before contacting Apple I decided to try a Backup & Restore.

I plugged in my iPod and pressed "Backup iPod". It did it fine, it seemed, and let me know when it was done. Then I clicked "Restore" and after a few of the normal errors (11 and 14) I force-restored it using the Home & Power buttons.

When it was finally restored I selected "Restore from Backup" and picked my latest Backup. That's where the problem starts… it keeps reaching 2/3 of the way done and then this error appears:
"iTunes could not restore the iPod 'NAME' because the backup could not be saved on the computer."

The problem occurs with all of my backups, and persists after a computer restart and after trying a different USB port (just in case.)

I looked around at several forums and found no one with a similar problem. The error seems to usually appear for other people when the backup is actually being created, not when the iPod is being restored to a backup like it does in this case.

I hope this was enough information. Thanks to any help you guys might be able to give 🙂

Cheers!
– Lindsay

Best Answer

I hopefully have a solution to this issue. I also had this problem, and I believe it's because you have insuffient disk space and iTunes being a large program requires so much disk space to be available in order to perform these tasks.

Therefore, iTunes will bring up the error after reaching 2/3 of the way and then the error appears: "iTunes could not restore the iPod/iphone 'NAME' because the backup could not be saved on the computer." The backup you did is there because you're obviously selecting it when "restoring from backup". So free up some disk space and redo the "restore from backup" and it should complete the process without any errors.