No backups for almost 2 years

[ajm222]

I recently sent my watch in for service/repair. I was told over chat to basically erase it and unpair it. I was unable to do it in the proper order because I didn't have my watch with me at the time, so they essentially had me send a signal to erase it first. I did that because the rep suggested they couldn't start processing a repair ticket or whatever until that was completed, and I figured the watch backed itself up with the phone daily. When I got home later I then chose to unpair. My understanding is that if I had done it the other way around it would have asked if I wanted to back it up first. But again, I didn't think that was an issue because I assumed it was backing itself up daily.

Well, I got the watch back yesterday after they said they couldn't find anything wrong with it, and I have re-paired it for the time being. It did ask if I wanted to restore from backup, but to my surprise I had only four backups showing, and all were from early 2017.

I am assuming all my health data etc is stored on the phone (not that I need it), and it appears all of my activity is still saved and wasn't erased. So I am assuming the only thing I lost were the settings and the way I had set up the watch faces gallery, and any music I transferred to the watch itself. None of these things are particularly important and all are easy to change back. But is there anything else that I might have lost that I am not thinking of?

Also, is there some setting that forces the watch to back things up daily that maybe I missed? Just curious.

Thanks

 

[ray737]

It’s my understanding the only time settings are saved is when u unpair the watch. Beyond that activities etc are backed up daily. I realized all this when I upgraded from AW3 to AW4

 

[tromboneaholic]

I recently sent my watch in for service/repair. I was told over chat to basically erase it and unpair it. I was unable to do it in the proper order because I didn't have my watch with me at the time, so they essentially had me send a signal to erase it first. I did that because the rep suggested they couldn't start processing a repair ticket or whatever until that was completed, and I figured the watch backed itself up with the phone daily. When I got home later I then chose to unpair. My understanding is that if I had done it the other way around it would have asked if I wanted to back it up first. But again, I didn't think that was an issue because I assumed it was backing itself up daily.

Well, I got the watch back yesterday after they said they couldn't find anything wrong with it, and I have re-paired it for the time being. It did ask if I wanted to restore from backup, but to my surprise I had only four backups showing, and all were from early 2017.

I am assuming all my health data etc is stored on the phone (not that I need it), and it appears all of my activity is still saved and wasn't erased. So I am assuming the only thing I lost were the settings and the way I had set up the watch faces gallery, and any music I transferred to the watch itself. None of these things are particularly important and all are easy to change back. But is there anything else that I might have lost that I am not thinking of?

Also, is there some setting that forces the watch to back things up daily that maybe I missed? Just curious.

Thanks

Health data is stored in iCloud if you have "Health" turned on in iCloud sync. It gets updated continuously as far as I can tell. This includes activity and achievements as well as the other health stats.

A backup of the Watch itself is only created when you unpair it from the iPhone.

 

[ajm222]

Cool, thanks all.