Restore of iPhone 5S blows away Apple Watch Data!

[Udder]

I felt my phone was acting a little sluggish so I decided to do a full back up to my computer via iTunes and then do a restore. This brought my phone to factory defaults and iTunes then asked me if I wanted to restore from my last backup. This worked fine and my iPhone was pretty much just as I left it, but ALL OF MY ACTIVITY (two weeks of exercise data) was lost.

This also forced me to re-pair with my Apple Watch. My clock face survived with my complications settings, but again, all of my Activity data and Workouts are now gone, as well as my Apple Pay cards (not surprised about the Apple Pay).

I know that with Fitbit, everything you did got uploaded to your online account so your data was always available in the cloud. I don't see this happening with Apple Watch as of now.

Was there a step I missed to backup my Activity Data?

 

[lchlch]

I felt my phone was acting a little sluggish so I decided to do a full back up to my computer via iTunes and then do a restore. This brought my phone to factory defaults and iTunes then asked me if I wanted to restore from my last backup. This worked fine and my iPhone was pretty much just as I left it, but ALL OF MY ACTIVITY (two weeks of exercise data) was lost.

This also forced me to re-pair with my Apple Watch. My clock face survived with my complications settings, but again, all of my Activity data and Workouts are now gone, as well as my Apple Pay cards (not surprised about the Apple Pay).

I know that with Fitbit, everything you did got uploaded to your online account so your data was always available in the cloud. I don't see this happening with Apple Watch as of now.

Was there a step I missed to backup my Activity Data?

I believe you need to turn on backup encryption in order to backup data from the health app.

 

[HopefulHumanist]

You can initiate a backup of the watch by unpairing it or resetting content and settings

 

[priscilla55]

I believe you need to turn on backup encryption in order to backup data from the health app.

Thanks - this is useful to know. I've just selected this on my iTunes backup so my health data will be safe.

 

[Udder]

I believe you need to turn on backup encryption in order to backup data from the health app.

Oh man, "Encrypt iPhone backup" says exactly that:
"This will allow account passwords and Health data to be backed up"

I wish I actually read that before I lost all my data I had in the Health App since it first came out.

I hope this will serve as a good example for everyone else who hasn't been encrypting their iPhone backups.

Thanks for pointing this out.

 

[The Tuck]

Sorry you lost that stuff man. Not the end of the world, but still annoying. I also believe that iCloud backups will preserve health and activity data if you want to go that route.

Tuck

 

[Udder]

Sorry you lost that stuff man. Not the end of the world, but still annoying. I also believe that iCloud backups will preserve health and activity data if you want to go that route.

Tuck

I did take this route and got all my health app and activity app data back from my iCloud backup, minus the two days of futzing around this this.

Thanks!