The password you entered to protect your iPhone backup could not be set.

When backing up your iphone or ipad using itunes any passwords that use the apple key chain that you have stored in your phone will not be backed up. Any passwords stored in third party apps may vary.

From my personal experience my wireless key and email account passwords did not get backed up so I had to restore them with my new phone restore.

To enable backup of all passwords stored in your iphone you have to encrypt the backup. This just means that the backup file stored on your computer cannot be accessed by anyone else. To access an encrypted backup you will need the password.

From the summary page of your phone/ipad within itunes just tick the box that says encrypt backup.

You will have to set a password, you need to remember this as this is the password you need to recover your backup.

Now your backup will be encrypted and all passwords stored on your iphone will also be backed up.

If you are doing this for the first time and get the following error, read on.

The password you entered to protect your iPhone backup could not be set

If you receive this error it probably means you are trying to set this password to your phone over a Wi-Fi connection.

When setting this up for the first time connect your phone to the USB port of your computer and try setting the password again.

You only have to do this once.

For more info on how to backup your iphone / ipad – click here – http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1766

This CCIE Blog has been created as a holding place on the internet for all my study notes towards passing the Cisco CCIE Lab Exam in Routing & Switching – I use the iphone to store pdf’s and videos so I always have access to study material wherever I am.