Need help with new iPhone (backup, sync, and restore)

[gismo]

Sunday I broke the screen on my iPhone 5 so today I went to a "non corporate" ATT store and got a iPhone 6 to replace it. At the store the tech tried to backup my old iPhone to the cloud but quit when the display said it would take multiple hours. He disabled some of the backups and tried again with the same result. At that point I noticed that most if not all of my contacts were loaded into the new phone. Then he connected both phones to a transfer device and initiated a copy.

After leaving the store I discovered that all my contacts were duplicated 3 or 6 times and several other configuration items weren't set properly, and my Notes are missing completely.

At home I synced my old phone with iTunes (USB connection), transferred purchased apps, and did a backup of the phone. Then I connected the new phone and tried to sync my it but iTunes won't recognize it. I then updated iTunes on my laptop and tried again with the same (lack of) results

Questions:
1) Is there an easy way to edit the duplicate contacts out of my new phone?

2) What do I need to do to make the new iPhone visible to iTunes on my computer?

3) When I attempt to backup the old iPhone to the cloud (one item category such as Calendar at a time I get popup question asking if I want to merge my data with what's already in the cloud. I suspect that if I do that the cloud will end up with even more duplicates. Is there any way to check what's in the cloud except to sync my new phone with it?

4) Should I just delete everything in the cloud and backup the old phone again?

 

[JGoodish]

You should be able to backup the old phone to iTunes, which should be faster than backing up to the cloud. Then, you should be able to restore from that backup to your new phone.

Alternatively, if your calendar and contacts are stored in a cloud service such as Gmail or iCloud, you could just sync them from there on the new phone. If they're not, you can enable iCloud in the Settings app on the old phone, and then enable it on the new phone with the same Apple ID. However, I'd do a "Reset All Content and Settings" in Settings->General->Reset on the new phone first to wipe it.

It sounds as though, maybe, your contacts and calendar data is already in iCloud since the retail store may have enabled it. You can check to see what's enabled in Settings->iCloud.


JKG

 

[denverpilot]

Sounds like the store attempted an iCloud backup.

I don't like them. Here is the difference. They don't get everything...

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204136

Note also that you're going to want to turn on encrypted backups of backing up to iTunes if you want your keychain data to come over.

iCloud backup was added as a stop gap for both folks who had no iTunes and folks using Windows iTunes (which has always been slightly flaky / if you're dealing with that, my condolences... Buggy and slow is bad enough on the Mac, it's worse on Winderz.)

If you're wondering what's in your iCloud for contacts (to see if they forked them up there), log into iCloud via the web from a regular browser and look at what's in there.

Best system for me has always been to backup to Mac iTunes with encryption turned on regularly. Then back that machine up also. Can always do a fresh restore / reinstall and be quite literally, right back to where you were before you switched iPhones or iPads minus having to re-download your Foreflight data.

 

[JGoodish]

I use iCloud backups because they get the data off site and I can restore from anywhere, without using iTunes. They also happen automatically, so I don't have to think about backup via iTunes. iCloud backups get everything an iTunes backup does, except for items already in the cloud, and locally stored data (such as music or movies) which are synced from iTunes.

However, having restored from iCloud before, it's excruciatingly slow compared with an iTunes restore.


JKG

 

[denverpilot]

The link above clearly states what's backed up in each. I recommend people read the docs and not go on what people on Internet aviation forums say, which is why I linked directly to the source at Apple.

Content not stored in Apple's ecosystem or old content (music they no longer license, and I have quite a bit of that) is not backed up to the Cloud.

Neither is anything "sensitive" like Apple Pay and Keychain data.

So basically if you want a *REAL* full backup of everything in the device so things work exactly as they did when you last backed up, only an iTunes encrypted backup really does that. Then only the App data has to be re-downloaded.

Everything else assumes your stuff is all provided by Apple's cloud. And a lot of my stuff simply isn't. And never will be.

The speed thing is also an issue for me. Whenever I've busted a phone I have already wasted a day getting the replacement. I want it running in an hour, not next week over my wimpy rural "broadband" connection.

There's also some weirdness between reauthorizing the phone without cell connection.

 

[JGoodish]

The link to which you so smugly refer basically validates that the iCloud backup captures everything not local to iTunes (such as music), or otherwise already stored in the cloud. There is no need to backup mail, calendar, and contacts, nor keychain data if it's already in iCloud or another cloud service, especially since restoring from an iCloud backup will restore the system cloud service configurations. It is not necessary that everything be "all provided by Apple's cloud."

Continuous backup via iTunes is only good if you can remember to do it often, and you can ensure the safety and integrity of the local PC. If you only infrequently execute the backup job, the PC is stolen, your house burns down or floods, or the PC is otherwise compromised, the iTunes backup is no good unless you're yet again backing up that PC to an offsite location.

If you're away from your PC and your iPhone needs to be restored, you're out of luck unless you have an iCloud backup.

I've used and restored from an iCloud backup. It worked very well, and the restored information was very current, unlike an iTunes backup would have been. It was, however, very slow (meaning hours, not weeks) and I would not recommend it for the purpose of transitioning between devices. Performance via USB from an iTunes backup would be significantly better.


JKG

 

[denverpilot]

Continuous backup via iTunes is only good if you can remember to do it often, and you can ensure the safety and integrity of the local PC. If you only infrequently execute the backup job, the PC is stolen, your house burns down or floods, or the PC is otherwise compromised, the iTunes backup is no good unless you're yet again backing up that PC to an offsite location.



If you're away from your PC and your iPhone needs to be restored, you're out of luck unless you have an iCloud backup.

Hmmm. How should I put this? "Duh." LOL.

There was nothing "smug" about the damned post. I said there are differences and linked to the documentation. All folks have to do is read to see what they want to do.

(The fact that there are differences is annoying. A "backup" means something specific and calling the small subset of data kept in iCloud a "backup" is misleading for non-techies.)

Examples:

- If you've opted out of Photo Stream and iCloud Photo Library, they're gone in a restore without a local backup/import to some other desktop application.
- If you happen to have a mail system that still uses POP3, gone.
- The doc mentions Apple Pay data. It's annoying to put all of those cards back in, if you're a heavy user of it.
- Any significant non-Apple ecosystem media collection. (Which is going to be in iTunes anyway, and you'll need to sync to it to get it all back...)

There's no need to have to "remember" anything to do a regular iTunes backup. Devices will all do a backup as soon as they're plugged into power if iTunes is running. I just leave it running on the mini in the office. Backups for that machine and off-site backups aren't the topic of this thread, but fall under the "Duh!" above.

The pretty significant annoyance that isn't mentioned in their doc is attempting to restore from iCloud on small bandwidth. If you're running 64GB or 128GB devices and keep them full, that can be multiple days on some internet connections.

In other words...

Folks should read the docs and assess your own situation and choose accordingly. Which is exactly what I said.

It'd be great if either type were *actually* a full backup. You're still going to have to re-download App data in either scenario, which is lame. Calling either iCloud backup or iTunes backup a "full backup" of an iOS device, is misleading on Apple's part. They're not.

You'll be reloading all of your Foreflight data (since this is a pilot forum after all), using either type, for example. No or low bandwidth but you thought you had a "backup" you could recover from? The brainiacs at Apple laugh at your silliness!

Backup? You wanted an *actual -- full -- backup*?! Nobody needs one of those, you silly end-user!