iPhone 11 Pro Time required for 256GB Restore?

[DCHook]

Okay, so I upgraded from an iPhone XS 256GB to a iPhone 11 Pro 512GB today. Upgraded my iPhone XS to iOS13, did a full backup (Mac w/ iTunes) of the device and then activated my iPhone 11 and started the restore process about 4 hours ago. It completed the first stage of the restore of the backup and then restarted the device. It's been at the full progress bar (on the phone) for probably 2 hours now. The iTunes status says "Syncing <phone name> (Step 3 of 3)" with "Waiting for changes to be applied".

Any thoughts? I know it's a lot of data and it's probably indexing and all sorts of good stuff and it's probably still working and fine but it seems like a really long time.

I'd take any suggestions.

PS If this the normal time for a full restore, I seriously need to spend some time pruning what I store on the device itself.

 

[Shirasaki]

Well, first, iTunes can no longer handle restore without connecting to the Internet for iOS device past iOS 10 I believe.

Then, during the restore process, Your iPhone will try to download stuff from iCloud, such as photos, Apple Music stuff and maybe some app data if you have those options enabled. Every single app is now downloaded and installed from App Store. Even iTunes 12.6.5 cannot do full app restore locally anymore (for apps that are bought from multiple accounts, iTunes now only restore from whichever account you have logged in during backup). These could take a very long time regardless of your internet speed. Purging old stuff could help, but situation wont change Much.

I know this sounds crazy, but you can actually try to force restart your iPhone if you find the bar is full but nothing happens after a few hours. The iPhone may continue to restore just fine.

 

[Ron21]

My 200GB restore via iTunes took 2 hours.

I'd recommend waiting some more. If it doesn't change, might be frozen, restore the phone and try again.

 

[DCHook]

Thanks for the replies. I guess I'll just let it go overnight. If it hasn't come back by morning, I'll force the issue.

I understand it taking a while but I wish they'd do a better job of managing the user experience during that process. A full progress bar for hours isn't terribly helpful to the user.

 

[Zetaprime]

Why not do a direct copy from the old phone to the new? iOS 12.4 and later have an option to transfer everything straight from one phone to the other via cable or Bluetooth.

 

[Voodoofreak]

Why not do a direct copy from the old phone to the new? iOS 12.4 and later have an option to transfer everything straight from one phone to the other via cable or Bluetooth.

This is what I did. Was up and running in half hour. Rest of the apps and iCloud stuff took a couple of hours to download.

 

[DCHook]

Well, I gave up on it. It had 6 hours to finish the job and that's just ridiculous. So, I disconnected it and restarted it and ... the only option I had when it restarted was "Swipe up to upgrade" and now I'm back at the same apple logo progress bar I was at before albeit with the progress restarted.

One of very few times I've had trouble with this process. Even if this completes, I don't trust it. I'm going to initiate another restore anyway.

 

[lexdiamonnyc]

mine took just over 2hrs....at one point it showed "5hrs remaining"....but in the end 2hrs was just about right...

 

[blulegend]

This happened to me too. Not good. Still stuck. Did a DFU restore and still doing it. There's another thread on here about getting stuck restoring.

 

[DCHook]

Yeah, it never came back after 7 hours. I finally killed it and it came up with the "Swipe up to Upgrade" and I gave it a go one more time overnight. 9 hours later still a progress bar at 100%. So, I've gone through the Reset process and starting the Restore all over again. We'll see this time ...

The frustrating part of this is the user experience. It's just garbage. No indication of what's going on. No indication of an ETA. Just awful. And, even if it works, we've all seen the progress bar pinned at 100% for hours as a time in this process. We just accept it because it eventually works.

Just an awful user experience from a company that supposedly prides itself on providing a good one.

 

[ricktat]

Yeah, it never came back after 7 hours. I finally killed it and it came up with the "Swipe up to Upgrade" and I gave it a go one more time overnight. 9 hours later still a progress bar at 100%. So, I've gone through the Reset process and starting the Restore all over again. We'll see this time ...

The frustrating part of this is the user experience. It's just garbage. No indication of what's going on. No indication of an ETA. Just awful. And, even if it works, we've all seen the progress bar pinned at 100% for hours as a time in this process. We just accept it because it eventually works.

Just an awful user experience from a company that supposedly prides itself on providing a good one.

I had the exact issue yesterday. I ended up calling Apple support.
They said to do the tap volume up then tap volume down and then continue to hold the power button until it goes into recovery mode. This is after the apple logo pops ups.

Then I had iTunes reinstall the firmware.

Then I went back and was able to install my restore with no issue.

This was an 11 Pro 256.

The 11 for the wife had zero issues

 

[PanAm-L1011]

This is why the night before I get a new phone I delete all music, photos, and videos from my phone. It is much quicker to restore when you don’t have those things on your backup if you’re backing up from the Cloud. Then I re-sync them from iTunes. It took probably 3+ hours to synch just over 300GB of music. It would have taken many many many hours to do that over the cloud.

 

[blulegend]

Finally got it to work by doing a second DFU. then set it up as a new phone just to make sure the thing could boot up. Then was able to do a restore from iTunes which worked!

 

[DCHook]

Yep. Me too. Hours wasted for sure thinking that I should give the restore "just a few more minutes".

I wish there was a little guidance to indicate that something has gone wrong.