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Restore backup from iCloud......is it really practical?

CrAkD

CrAkD

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Feb 15, 2010
3,180
255
Boston, MA
Its great in theory but I just updated my iPad 2 and girlfriends iPhone 4 to beta 2. restored the ipad from icloud backup in about 20 minutes. now its downloading all the apps over the air. its going to take awhile. My girlfriends phone is reading 16 hours to finish the icloud backup........I like the idea of icloud but plugging it into the computer is alot quicker however if you choose to backup to the cloud you no longer have current backups on your computer.

Apple needs to either enable both at the same or build something into mac osx that lets itunes download your current backup every night so you always have the most current backup ready to be installed in less then 16 hours.

Or maybe Im doing this wrong and you guys will tell me a more time efficient way to do this?
 
I think what they should do is... (and this is just off the top of my head)

If you enable wifi backups.
• If you are at home, ie. on the same network as your mac. It should do wifi backup TO YOUR MAC, which will then in turn upload your backups to iCloud (if you so choose).
• If you are away from home, and plug in to power and are on wifi (such as the requirements for wifi backup). It should do wifi backup to iCloud directly, due to absence of your Mac.

There is then the option that in this case it will push the iCloud backup back down to your Mac, or you only have the Mac backups when it was done at home in the first place.

I would like the ability to still have the backups local, but also accessible in case I am somewhere else and for whatever reason need to do a restore or something (or my phone becomes unusable while away from home, but my last backup that was made while away from home is available to me when I get home and plug into my Mac to restore)
 
Good thoughts and I agree. What happens in iOS 5 when you connect your iPad to your PC via USB? Doesn't it still sync?
 
I don't have iOS 5 (or my iPad for that matter, it arrives monday). You can do the traditional sync with the cable, wifi is just an option, from what I've read. It would be nice if they address the things we mentioned over wifi though as far as backups.

For example, I don't sync that often, usually only when I have a new album that I want to put on my phone. But the thought of daily backups, for when I do need them is nice. Kinda like time machine (time capsule?) for my phone. I use time machine on my NAS for background wifi backups, because I found I was plugging into my external drive less and less over the months.
 
Welp, I just upgraded to iOS beta 2 as well and it won't even sync my backup at all. Right now it says "Time Remaining: 28 hours... and I really have no clue why. It's a 2.8GB backup, but the fact that it just might fail again (second attempt right now) makes me lose my high expectations for iCloud (I know it's beta, but still, this is ALL of my data (because you can't backup on iTunes if you're backing up in iCloud)) and if I lose this data i will cry. I don't care that it's gonna take (now) 31 hours to backup, although it sucks it'll take that long, at least it'll (maybe) do it... Bummed right now.

1st post btw.
 
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ztm.000 said:
Welp, I just upgraded to iOS beta 2 as well and it won't even sync my backup at all. Right now it says "Time Remaining: 28 hours... and I really have no clue why. It's a 2.8GB backup, but the fact that it just might fail again (second attempt right now) makes me lose my high expectations for iCloud (I know it's beta, but still, this is ALL of my data (because you can't backup on iTunes if you're backing up in iCloud)) and if I lose this data i will cry. I don't care that it's gonna take (now) 31 hours to backup, although it sucks it'll take that long, at least it'll (maybe) do it... Bummed right now.

1st post btw.
Click to expand...

You shouldn't loose all of your data. Won't you still have your most recent successful iTunes backup even if iCloud doesn't work out for you this attempt?
 
GabooN said:
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You shouldn't loose all of your data. Won't you still have your most recent successful iTunes backup even if iCloud doesn't work out for you this attempt?
Click to expand...

Yes, but my most recent backup in iTunes itself was when the actual iOS5 Beta dropped. I didn't back up to iTunes last night prior to beta 2 because I just assumed that everything would work. Before I installed beta 2, I backed up on iCloud.

Maybe Apples server traffic is still high... I don't see why this is as big of an issue as this is. iCloud is supposed to work, even in the beta stages. Plus, you all are having success with restoring backups. Maybe it's because if it's file size? I really don't know at this point, except to try and keep restoring.
 
ztm.000 said:
Yes, but my most recent backup in iTunes itself was when the actual iOS5 Beta dropped. I didn't back up to iTunes last night prior to beta 2 because I just assumed that everything would work. Before I installed beta 2, I backed up on iCloud.

Maybe Apples server traffic is still high... I don't see why this is as big of an issue as this is. iCloud is supposed to work, even in the beta stages. Plus, you all are having success with restoring backups. Maybe it's because if it's file size? I really don't know at this point, except to try and keep restoring.
Click to expand...

Oh right I see what you mean now. I had read it as saying you had just updated to iOS 5, from 4, not to beta 2.
 
the ipad icloud backup worked but when it came to reinstalling all the apps wireless it froze and stalled out so I ended up having to reset all settings and just install the apps from itunes. the phone backup never worked so I had to set it up as new and then just turn on icloud contacts to get the contacts back on the phone. I think beta 2 is actually MORE buggy then beta 1.
 
So here's a little update. It worked. Where I work, we have like the fastest internet ever (literally) and I just restored the back up there on their network and that was the end of it. Seriously I am so glad the backup went through. Thanks for all the input, and if anyone is reading this in the future, just connect to wifi that's reliable and fast.
 
Having restored from my iCloud backup yesterday, iCloud now apparently won't backup because the iPad is still being restored. Anyone else seen this?
 
ztm.000 said:
Welp, I just upgraded to iOS beta 2 as well and it won't even sync my backup at all. Right now it says "Time Remaining: 28 hours... and I really have no clue why. It's a 2.8GB backup, but the fact that it just might fail again (second attempt right now) makes me lose my high expectations for iCloud (I know it's beta, but still, this is ALL of my data (because you can't backup on iTunes if you're backing up in iCloud)) and if I lose this data i will cry. I don't care that it's gonna take (now) 31 hours to backup, although it sucks it'll take that long, at least it'll (maybe) do it... Bummed right now.

1st post btw.
Click to expand...

You actually still CAN backup via iTunes, just not automatically. Plug in (or maybe you can do this wirelessly too, haven't tried) on your iPhone on the left hand side in iTunes, and choose the "Backup" option. This will do a manual backup for you. Let me know if it works for you. I recommend still doing this manual backup every once in a while so if you need a fast restore, you have access to one, at which point you can restore from your backup and iCloud should restore any further changes that had been made since the last manual iTunes backup.
 
Zcott said:
Having restored from my iCloud backup yesterday, iCloud now apparently won't backup because the iPad is still being restored. Anyone else seen this?
Click to expand...

Yes I am encountering this as well. I don't know why either. Kinda sucks, but at the same time backing up directly to iTunes gives me peace of mind.

shmootz said:
You actually still CAN backup via iTunes, just not automatically. Plug in (or maybe you can do this wirelessly too, haven't tried) on your iPhone on the left hand side in iTunes, and choose the "Backup" option. This will do a manual backup for you. Let me know if it works for you. I recommend still doing this manual backup every once in a while so if you need a fast restore, you have access to one, at which point you can restore from your backup and iCloud should restore any further changes that had been made since the last manual iTunes backup.
Click to expand...

Well actually that's not all true, see, if you choose to back up to the cloud, you cannot back up to iTunes, the option is grayed out when you go to manually do it in iTunes. If you're not backing up to the could (I'm not right now,^^^) then you should have no difficulty backing up to iTunes.
 
why do they bother to have automatic download on/off switches its on by default? I refused to restore icloud backup have store auto downloads to off but but as soon as I type in my store ID I have 3 pages of apps waiting to download! I got fed up with beta 2 and went back to 4.3.3. and even on 4.3.3. there is a page of apps waiting to download but atleast all the downloads are paused on 4.3. so i can let it download 1 app at a time and not freeze it up trying to download them all. this cloud thing needs ALOT of work.
 
ICloud restore is not practical for users with low bandwidth.

Wifi syncing with iTunes is the killer feature for me in iOS 5.

Can anyone confirm if one will be able to do restore wirelessly with iTunes in iOS 5?
 
A restore may take a while over the Internet but restoring should be a rare thing we need to do in emergencies. For something you may never need to do, I don't see how a 20 minute restore time is impractical.

And secondly, this is a beta, most of you guys shouldn't even have it let alone be on a forum complaining about how it doesn't work right.
 
EssentialParado said:
A restore may take a while over the Internet but restoring should be a rare thing we need to do in emergencies. For something you may never need to do, I don't see how a 20 minute restore time is impractical.

And secondly, this is a beta, most of you guys shouldn't even have it let alone be on a forum complaining about how it doesn't work right.
Click to expand...

How will 16 gb data be restored in 20 minutes on a normal broadband connection??

It will take hours!
 
EssentialParado said:
A restore may take a while over the Internet but restoring should be a rare thing we need to do in emergencies. For something you may never need to do, I don't see how a 20 minute restore time is impractical.

And secondly, this is a beta, most of you guys shouldn't even have it let alone be on a forum complaining about how it doesn't work right.
Click to expand...

First off my Internet connection is 50mb down and 35mb up.

Second off. 20 minute restore would be amazing. Ipad took more then 20 minutes just to get to redownloading the apps and then it froze. The phone said as much as 26 hours then got down to like an hour and crashed and couldn't finish it.

My prob is the auto download thing. I don't want it to Start downloading 50 apps when I first sign into the store even when auto download is set to OFF (it even does this on 4.3) apple has to know that people try free apps just to try them and don't need them automatically reloaded onto the iPad after a restore. it must be a bug in 5.0 beta 2 that they all start to download at once when on 4.3 their all paused and you have to unpause each one.
 
EssentialParado said:
And secondly, this is a beta, most of you guys shouldn't even have it let alone be on a forum complaining about how it doesn't work right.
Click to expand...

Not the point... The point of a forum board is to discuss things just like this. Yeah, most of the people here shouldn't have the beta, but do, who cares. They wanted in on the fun just like we did. So what? Those of us who legitimately have access to the beta should be able to discuss it freely. Please, take your negativity elsewhere. Please.

And we're talking about iCloud restores on this topic, so stick to the topic, and refrain from being a troll.
 
I have my apps backed up to my computer. I found that when restoring from iCloud backup, once the iPad starts to download the apps, you can connect to iTunes and click the "sync" button, and voila, the apps start syncing from the computer instead of redownloading everything over the air.

I also periodically backup my iPad to my computer by right-clicking on it in the left-hand panel in iTunes and selecting "backup." Not sure why it was greyed out for that one poster, that's not happened to me. Of course, whenever I need to restore, the lates backup is NOT the one on the computer, LOL.
 
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