iCloud storage questions

Matthew

Matthew

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Matthew
I need a little learning on how this whole Apple iCloud storage and backup work.

We have one MacBook with 2 accounts and 2 iPhones. The iCloud storage is the normal 5GB standard for each of us. Both our phones are set to backup to the cloud. I've turned off about as much as I know about, so the backed up info should be limited to what I *think* are messages, device data, app settings, and maybe other things I don't know about. Both our iCloud storage areas are either full or nearly full, and almost all of it is backups. It's gotten to the point where we get the warning that backups are not successful, pay more.

I see settings for apps that "use iCloud" and other settings for "choose data to back up".

Pretty much I want to be able to restore a phone if we need to replace one, and not lose calendars, contacts, emails, messages, and app data. Are apps themselves backed up, or are the desktop icons saved in such a way that they will download the app if it wasn't backed up?
 
not a direct answer to your question but why not just backup the iphone on your macbook?
 
And then, back up the macbook to a couple of cheap EasyStore (or similar) drives.
 
Bob Noel said:
not a direct answer to your question but why not just backup the iphone on your macbook?
Click to expand...

That's an easy question to answer - I didn't know I could.

Looking into it, it requires the phone be hardwired to the MacBook, then a couple checkboxes clicked, and then the phone can be synced wirelessly after that?

Note: I do backup the MacBook onto an external drive. Yeah, I know, I need to have quadruple off-site redundancy...

I'll check into that in a little bit.
 
Messages gets huge if you don’t set it to purge photos and attachments in the Messages settings. I’d look there first. People texting around 10+ megapixel shots multiple times a day...
 
Cap'n Jack said:
And then, back up the macbook to a couple of cheap EasyStore (or similar) drives.
Click to expand...
I do that already. I didn't know about the ability to sync the phones to the MacBook.

Is that something that's done automatically? What gets synced - does it go both directions?
 
Wireless sync you have the initial setup right. It’ll start failing about every six months and you’ll have to plug in to get it back in sync. If your WiFi has the security setting to not allow wireless clients to communicate with each other or other wired lan devices (not commonly on by default but available as a security feature in most WiFi router combos) it’ll fail completely.

I backup ours wirelessly to a windows VM honestly using the old iTunes method. Then I can just copy the entire VM to offsite storage. Newer OSX moved iOS device backups into Finder and out of iTunes.
 
denverpilot said:
Messages gets huge if you don’t set it to purge photos and attachments in the Messages settings. I’d look there first. People texting around 10+ megapixel shots multiple times a day...
Click to expand...
No kidding, with family sending us kid and cat pix many times a day, I've been trying to keep that cleaned out.

I'll look at Messages settings now. (Looks like mine is set to keep messages for 1 year, and I'm about to change it to 30 days.)
 
denverpilot said:
Wireless sync you have the initial setup right. It’ll start failing about every six months and you’ll have to plug in to get it back in sync. If your WiFi has the security setting to not allow wireless clients to communicate with each other or other wired lan devices (not commonly on by default but available as a security feature in most WiFi router combos) it’ll fail completely.

I backup ours wirelessly to a windows VM honestly using the old iTunes method. Then I can just copy the entire VM to offsite storage. Newer OSX moved iOS device backups into Finder and out of iTunes.
Click to expand...
Mine should be in Finder. I was just looking online at Apple docs and saw that. The part I'm missing is the part where I need to enable syncing.

But - what about the backups to iCloud then? Is that redundant? Or can I then turn OFF those backups and use those 5GB for something else?
 
Matthew said:
No kidding, with family sending us kid and cat pix many times a day, I've been trying to keep that cleaned out.

I'll look at Messages settings now. (Looks like mine is set to keep messages for 1 year, and I'm about to change it to 30 days.)
Click to expand...

I think when I did that it still took up iCloud space for a while. Can’t remember if I had to purge that somehow or if it cleared up on its own slowly. It wasn’t immediate whatever I did, just in case that’s a surprise.
 
denverpilot said:
I think when I did that it still took up iCloud space for a while. Can’t remember if I had to purge that somehow or if it cleared up on its own slowly. It wasn’t immediate whatever I did, just in case that’s a surprise.
Click to expand...
From what I've seen, anything you delete from the iCloud sticks around for about 30 days to give you an opportunity to recover it.
 
Matthew said:
Mine should be in Finder. I was just looking online at Apple docs and saw that. The part I'm missing is the part where I need to enable syncing.

But - what about the backups to iCloud then? Is that redundant? Or can I then turn OFF those backups and use those 5GB for something else?
Click to expand...

If you have local backups you can then turn off or on whatever you want to backup to iCloud as usual. They’re not related. I keep a handful of things in iCloud but the main backup is local.

One downside of local if you see it as such, setting up a new phone is a “must bring laptop to store” or “must drive home first” thing. We do the latter. Since we’re roughly an hour from anyplace we would buy phones we just plan to be off grid for however long until we get home and do the setup.

The nice part is, it’s an identical copy of the old phone. Not an “apps download and then download all their data again” which was hellish on poor internet. Big deal for us pre-Starlink. USB restore is slow but never anywhere near as slow as iCloud on garbage internet!
 
Cap'n Jack said:
And then, back up the macbook to a couple of cheap EasyStore (or similar) drives.
Click to expand...

don't forget that those cheap EasyStore drives don't last forever. I had been backing up to 2 of them (alternating), and last month one of them failed. hmmmm

And for more amusement, until a couple of years ago I used a Lacie NAS configured as a RAID (of some flavor) for my backups. None of the drives failed... the NAS box failed... <sigh> and of course by then Lacie didn't make that device anymore. <sigh>
 
Matthew said:
That's an easy question to answer - I didn't know I could.

Looking into it, it requires the phone be hardwired to the MacBook, then a couple checkboxes clicked, and then the phone can be synced wirelessly after that?

Note: I do backup the MacBook onto an external drive. Yeah, I know, I need to have quadruple off-site redundancy...

I'll check into that in a little bit.
Click to expand...

I don't bother with the wireless sync. I find it very easy to just connect the iphone to the laptop using the USB to lightening cable (the same one I use to charge the iphone).

but note that I don't have anything critical on my iphone. Although this is tempting fate, if my iphone died, I wouldn't lose anything particularly important.
 
Bob Noel said:
don't forget that those cheap EasyStore drives don't last forever. I had been backing up to 2 of them (alternating), and last month one of them failed. hmmmm

And for more amusement, until a couple of years ago I used a Lacie NAS configured as a RAID (of some flavor) for my backups. None of the drives failed... the NAS box failed... <sigh> and of course by then Lacie didn't make that device anymore. <sigh>
Click to expand...
That's why I said "a couple" ;)
 
Matthew said:
I do that already. I didn't know about the ability to sync the phones to the MacBook.

Is that something that's done automatically? What gets synced - does it go both directions?
Click to expand...
I back up the data files manually, but on a PC which is a more open environment, but not as easy to use (tradeoffs).
 
denverpilot said:
If you have local backups you can then turn off or on whatever you want to backup to iCloud as usual. They’re not related. I keep a handful of things in iCloud but the main backup is local.

One downside of local if you see it as such, setting up a new phone is a “must bring laptop to store” or “must drive home first” thing. We do the latter. Since we’re roughly an hour from anyplace we would buy phones we just plan to be off grid for however long until we get home and do the setup.

The nice part is, it’s an identical copy of the old phone. Not an “apps download and then download all their data again” which was hellish on poor internet. Big deal for us pre-Starlink. USB restore is slow but never anywhere near as slow as iCloud on garbage internet!
Click to expand...
But if you do take a phone to the store when you buy another, their tech support will tell you "first, backup your phone to the cloud so we can download back to the new one".

Found a cable and am about to go in.
 
Well, THAT was easy.

Edit:

Someone made a comment years ago about Apple products: They make it easy to do things, but hard to find out how to do things.
 
So now I've backed up my phone to the MacBook. Will it auto backup automatically like the iCloud does, as long as the MacBook is on and I'm logged into my account, and both devices are on the same WiFi?
 
And another q: If I now have the MacBook as the backup device, will I still be able to use iCloud as a photo storage location? With backups on the MacBook, I can now delete the backups from the iCloud to free up space?
 
Matthew said:
But if you do take a phone to the store when you buy another, their tech support will tell you "first, backup your phone to the cloud so we can download back to the new one".
Click to expand...
That wouldn't work if you lose or destroy your phone. I was glad I had backed up to the cloud when my old phone went swimming in the bay... in my pocket. My new phone has also gone swimming, but it survived since Apple made them a little more water resistant.
 
Matthew said:
So now I've backed up my phone to the MacBook. Will it auto backup automatically like the iCloud does, as long as the MacBook is on and I'm logged into my account, and both devices are on the same WiFi?
Click to expand...

I believe the latest stuff has been triggering about once a week when the phone is actively charging, but I’d have to check. It’s varied over the years.
 
denverpilot said:
That’s the number one problem with Apple’s fake “repair” business model. Zero chance to recover data. And iCloud has never backed up ALL data.
Click to expand...
What I was getting at (and I didn't make it that clear), was that I hadn't done a backup to my computer in many moons. If I didn't have the phone set up to backup to the cloud, I would have lost more data than I did. Not sure I lost that much. The restore went as expected. I think I had to re-enter things like passwords for apps, but you wouldn't want those backed up to the cloud anyway.
 
denverpilot said:
One downside of local if you see it as such, setting up a new phone is a “must bring laptop to store” or “must drive home first” thing. We do the latter. Since we’re roughly an hour from anyplace we would buy phones we just plan to be off grid for however long until we get home and do the setup.
Click to expand...
I haven’t purchased a phone in a store in years. Order it from Apple and have it delivered. I even had it hand delivered same day last time I broke one. Do the restore on the new phone then swap the SIM card when it’s ready and you have almost no downtime.
 
bluesky74656 said:
I haven’t purchased a phone in a store in years. Order it from Apple and have it delivered. I even had it hand delivered same day last time I broke one. Do the restore on the new phone then swap the SIM card when it’s ready and you have almost no downtime.
Click to expand...

That works too.
 
Everskyward said:
What I was getting at (and I didn't make it that clear), was that I hadn't done a backup to my computer in many moons. If I didn't have the phone set up to backup to the cloud, I would have lost more data than I did. Not sure I lost that much. The restore went as expected. I think I had to re-enter things like passwords for apps, but you wouldn't want those backed up to the cloud anyway.
Click to expand...

Yup. On 25 Mb network you really do want it all backed up locally. It’s a multi hour PITA to restore only partial data from iCloud and then have to download app data. Or if a particular app doesn’t play cloud games and stores data only on the device.

Example : If you like having all States in your Foreflight, it’ll be a couple days on rural internet...

Restore from a local backup, it’s a couple of hours.
 
denverpilot said:
Yup. On 25 Mb network you really do want it all backed up locally. It’s a multi hour PITA to restore only partial data from iCloud and then have to download app data. Or if a particular app doesn’t play cloud games and stores data only on the device.

Example : If you like having all States in your Foreflight, it’ll be a couple days on rural internet...

Restore from a local backup, it’s a couple of hours.
Click to expand...
Seems as if I started the restore at the Apple store, then came home to do the rest. But I have good internet here; Sonic fiber. When I tally the plusses and minuses of my new residence compared to my old, internet speed comes out as a huge plus.
 
Looks like my phone and MacBook are playing well with each other.

I have the phone set to automatically sync via wifi, and have done a full backup to the MacBook. I turned off the iCloud backup setting on the phone, and then deleted the iCloud backup. That freed up about 3.5GB of the 5GB on my iCloud.
 
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I just went through this. I got a new iPhone, got everything switched over but decided to keep my old phone not on the cell plan, but connected to wifi as simply the second factor authentication device for my work VPN so it can stay at my desk. (I was always having to run to another room to get the dang phone because I don’t keep it on me at 5:30 AM in my jammies).

So I start getting messages that I’m almost out of cloud storage. Turns out the old phone is still backing itself up because it’s connected to wifi. So I tried to turn backup off and it said, “turning off backup will delete all your data on this phone”. What? That makes no sense, I don’t want to wipe the phone, I want to delete this phone’s iCloud backup and just let the new phone backup on the cloud.

I must have figured it out because it’s no longer backing up and I deleted the old phone backup from the cloud without wiping the phone but I still don’t understand why I got that message or remember what I did to get around it.

Before this I didn’t really understand that Apple iCloud is not associated with your cell provider and doesn’t automatically dissociate if you take a device off your cell plan.

The other thing that I can’t wrap my head around is how Apple syncs all your devices. I opened my iPad and discovered that notes I wrote on my iPhone were available on the iPad. I’m still stuck in the era where I should be able to manage data individually on each local device, and opt IN to share across devices, but Apple has it set up to where syncing is default.

Same with MS Office now. I can’t open Word or Excel on my local machine without seeing all the documents I was using on the other machine. That is deeply disturbing to me. So I’ve started writing letters on an airgapped machine running Windows 7 and Office 2003 so there’s no possible way for my personal stuff to go to some remote server owned by Microsoft and sold to the NSA.
 
Rushie said:
... So I’ve started writing letters on an airgapped machine running Windows 7 and Office 2003 so there’s no possible way for my personal stuff to go to some remote server owned by Microsoft and sold to the NSA.
Click to expand...

that's want they want you to think...

;-)
 
Rushie said:
The other thing that I can’t wrap my head around is how Apple syncs all your devices. I opened my iPad and discovered that notes I wrote on my iPhone were available on the iPad. I’m still stuck in the era where I should be able to manage data individually on each local device, and opt IN to share across devices, but Apple has it set up to where syncing is default.
Click to expand...
It asks you when you set it up, you can say no. If you don't want it on, turn it off. It's unfortunate that everything these days defaults to turning everything on in the most promiscuous way possible, and it's a pain to go in and turn everything off (no, I don't want iCloud, no I don't want to be signed in, no I don't want location services/wifi/bluetooth on when I'm not using them...) but still worth doing.
 
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