iCloud backup of iPad all of a sudden went from 450MB to 7.1GB

[acousticbiker]

Can you provide a "Settings/General/Usage/Manage Storage" screen shot?
Have you rented or purchased any movies or TV shows?
I remember some having trouble with these sometimes remaining in memory and causing trouble.

Here you go. I've purchased movies in the past and download one or two locally to watch - I'll check to see if deleting those might help. And kslingo: no voice memos

 

[Abazigal]

Can't help you much, but here are some areas to explore.

http://www.reddit.com/r/iphone/comments/182g8t/is_your_icloud_backup_way_too_big_2_things_to/

Could be sms attachments and / or voicemail.

iOS was storing 2, 3, sometimes even 4 copies of the same voice memos.

var/mobile/Media/Recordings was over 2GB in size. I know I only have about 90 voice memos (and only 30 in the Voice Memo app), so this was strange. Going into the folder revealed 357 voice memos, most of them stored in at least triplicate. (Side note: I'm not even sure why iTunes backs up voice memos that have already been copied to iTunes; apparently it just backs up that whole folder). So I backed up the voice memos that I had already synced with iTunes, unchecked the box that said "Include Voice Memos" under Music sync settings, backed up my phone, and then destroyed that whole folder. I then turned "Include Voice Memos" back on and synced my phone and all 90 of them showed back up in that folder, while only 4 showed up in the Voice Memos app. I thought that was odd, so I synced again. Now there were still only 4 in the app, but 170-something in that folder. iTunes was copying the same ones again, and since they weren't referenced in the Recordings.db file, it apparently didn't know they were already there. It appears that if you have any orphaned voice memos (and I'm not sure how 86 of mine now are), they will be copied again and again to your phone. I just turned off syncing voice memos altogether and deleted all the files in that folder again. After removing those, my iCloud backup was down to 2GB.

Next, I found that:
SMS/Attachments was 1GB. Under /var/mobile/Library/SMS, the SMS.db file itself was only 42MB. This is for entire threads going back to 2009. I'm guessing they compress the hell out of this. But the Attachments folder was 1GB. That seems plausible to me, since I send pics and video a decent amount, but I read about an issue where iOS was saving SMS attachments even after you had deleted them. This issue has been fixed in 6.1, but I have to wonder if there are any orphaned pictures/videos in there. I'm tempted to back up the entire database and then wipe the folder. Doing so would bring my backup down to 1GB in size. Which seems almost.. normal.

 

[Enjoylife1788]

Here you go. I've purchased movies in the past and download one or two locally to watch - I'll check to see if deleting those might help. And kslingo: no voice memos

Looking from the screenshot, it looks like its backing up the entire ibooks library which is too at 7 GB.

 

[Apple blogger]

Interesting idea - gave it a shot. Strangely, the 'Next Backup Size' did not change as I switched off app by app (all the way to switching all apps off). In other words, even with no apps selected, the Next Backup Size is 7GB! This is unchanged even after I turn backup off / delete the backup and reset the iPad.

Give it some time #.. Or wait. Delete the backup.. Turn off all apps but photos..turn iCloud backup off and log out.. Then log in again ..

Option 2 turn on everything and turn off photo backup.. So everything will be backed up except your photos... . let it autobackup.. Give it an hour or 2 #

I think the 12.3 mb which is shown is not correct cause u have 20 more GB of photos and the backup size is 12.3 mb.. Pretty unlikely to happen .. Unless you have a few photos syncing from your PC...


----------

Looking from the screenshot, it looks like its backing up the entire ibooks library which is too at 7 GB.

That I think it depebds whether he has it syncing from iTunes or has downloaded it straight from the book Store.. If he is syncing anything from iTunes , it won't backup..

 

[acousticbiker]

Looking from the screenshot, it looks like its backing up the entire ibooks library which is too at 7 GB.

Nice! I deleted a few big iBooks from the iPad and now my backup is back to ~450MB! Thanks for everyone's help with this!

 

[Enjoylife1788]

Nice! I deleted a few big iBooks from the iPad and now my backup is back to ~450MB! Thanks for everyone's help with this!

Your Welcome. I am glad it was helpful.

 

[cariacou]

Turn off apps backup
(If already off, toggle the switch)

 

[Solver]

Nice! I deleted a few big iBooks from the iPad and now my backup is back to ~450MB! Thanks for everyone's help with this!

It used to be that you could see the size and even turn off the iBook iCloud backups. Now that iBooks is integrated into the OS, it has lost those features. I don't even see it on the iOS 8.2 beta.
Another needlessly perplexing issue that should be simple for Apple to fix.