iCloud restore taking all day (and still going...)

[iphnhelp]

Had to get my iPhone 5 swapped out because of lint inside the camera lens. Since I got the new phone at 11am I've been trying to restore from my iCloud backup. Feel like it's spinning its wheels- tried on different wifi networks and restarted the process several times. Currently it says 38 hours remaining.

I've never had a problem with iCloud restore in the past- it always finishes in about an hour. I called Apple- no known iCloud issues. I wish I would have made a hard backup with iTunes before the swap but it was a last min. thing.

I guess I'm asking if anyone is currently experiencing similar issues? Any suggestions?

 

[Zcott]

There's probably a lot of people restoring iCloud backups after Christmas to new devices but that seems excessive. I'd just turn it off and try again, your iCloud backup should be unaffected.

 

[Risco]

I had this problem even before Xmas. I think it is to do with the poor wifi in iOS 6. Have you tried 6.1, as it seems to be faster although I have not tried a full restore I must say.

 

[iphnhelp]

Tried a different person's iCloud account and was able to get it to make good progress on the restore with their account. So it seems it has to do with my iCloud account. I don't want to do now- very frustrated.

 

[iphnhelp]

No luck. I'm just going to start over.

Still need to do some experimenting and see if my iPad will restore from iCloud- if it won't then I'll know something this wrong with my iCloud account.

 

[iphnhelp]

Here's an update for anyone experiencing this issue: IT'S WORKING NOW.

I decided to set up as a new iPhone and start over. iCloud sync got me most of the way back- just lost texts, app data, and photos (the ones photo stream didn't catch). Turns out this wasn't all that bad and it gave me a chance to prune the apps I keep on my iPhone by only installing the ones I used.

But I still needed to know that my iCloud account was capable of restoring a backup so I could rely on it going forward.

Now, a few days later, I just did a full iTunes backup of my current iPhone and then went through the process of restoring again from the original iCloud backup, the one that refused to restore days ago. AND IT WORKED. The progress bar started moving right away and it completed the process in about an hour.

Nothing changed, same wifi network, same device. Makes me think it was an issue with my iCloud account at the time- maybe a server was down, who knows.

Now that I have that original backup I'll make an iTunes backup of it and extract the photos and text I need to save. Then, I think I'm going back to my newer backup- I'm actually enjoying having cleaned up phone.

It's been a very frustrating experience and reminded me that iCloud can't be relied on alone. I'll be doing iTunes backups at least once a month.