Unpair/Repair to new watch... fail

[convergent]

I've only had my watch for a week, its not the end of the world... but it appears the simple, "unpair/repair" didn't work for me. I am curious why it didn't work, so that is the pain point of the thread.

When I got the new watch, I went into the iPhone and selected unpair. That completed. I then selected pair on the new one, and when prompted said to restore from backup and picked the backup from the other watch. The date on the backup wasn't today, so that is potentially part of the problem. I thought the backup was done automatically from watch to iPhone. I got no indication that it wasn't going to work and proceeded with the restore. Upon the restore finishing, I found that it was the default out of the box configuration... no apps... no app data.

The new watch wasn't updated to WatchOS2. So, that could have been the issue... and I suspect that it was. I'm doing the update now, and being that it took about 10 hours on the first watch, this kind of spoiled my fun tonight. It does seem to be going a lot quicker this time though.

Once the WatchOS2 update is completed, is there any way to get back to the backup from the original watch? It would still save me several hours of fiddling with settings if I could restore from that... but not a huge amount of exercise data that I'd lose since it was only a week.

 

[JayLenochiniMac]

The solution is quite simple. Set it up as new and update to wOS2, then unpair it. You should then be able to see your backup when you re-pair.

This action is necessary as you can't use a wOS2 backup in a watch still on wOS1.

 

[convergent]

The solution is quite simple. Set it up as new and update to wOS2, then unpair it. You should then be able to see your backup when you re-pair.

This action is necessary as you can't use a wOS2 backup in a watch still on wOS1.

OK, will give that a shot.. thanks.

 

[Cowboy1629]

You should have an older backup on your iPhone that you can restore from, I have several on mine from all of the pairing and unpairing I have done.

 

[convergent]

The solution is quite simple. Set it up as new and update to wOS2, then unpair it. You should then be able to see your backup when you re-pair.

This action is necessary as you can't use a wOS2 backup in a watch still on wOS1.

Looks like this is working exactly as you suggested. I finished the OS update (took way less time than on the other watch), and did another unpair/repair. It gave me multiple backups, and now restoring the original one. It prompted me for security code on my credit card for apple pay, so assuming its good to go once it finishes. Thanks.

EDIT: OK, here is a weird one. Its still syncing, but iCloud now thinks I have two Apple Watch Sports. Hopefully after it reboots it will figure that out, but just looking at iCloud now it looks strange.