Why is 1TB of storage being used for health app?

Hi all,

I have the exact same problem. I've spent 1 hour and 10 minutes on the phone with 3 different Apple support people today - the last person I spoke to was from the Health team (apparently) and even he was stumped at first. For context, my phone is an iPhone 11 Pro 256GB, of which, I've used 71.7GB of data, however, my Health app is 1.61TB. The bar is completely coloured in red like the OP. Following investigation, the Apple representative told me that the engineers are aware of this and I should keep a look out for an update. I asked what I should do in the meantime in regards to backing up my iPhone (as neither the Cloud or my Mac are capable, as they both think I have too much data) and his response was that there was nothing else he could do. I get that this isn't his fault, and I know he doesn't have a magic wand, but this is frustrating to the extreme. What's even worse is there are posts about this back in Mar-20 if you Google it, so either this is an ongoing issue (meaning resolution will not be quick) or it's an issue that has been resolved in the past but has cropped up again (perhaps due to IOS 14). I'm hoping for the latter, as in theory the engineers will know how to fix this if they've done it before.

I don't know for definite, but I'd assume the more people that phone up, then the higher priority this will receive, as such, any one who hasn't called yet might consider phoning up Apple and logging this. If you do, be careful of the 1st line team, as the lady I spoke to was just trying to sell me additional storage space on the Cloud... I had to insist that I had over 600GB of my 1TB drive spare on my Mac, and that there was no way my phone could take up this much room!

Following this guide worked for me because my health data was only saying 33GB, so I was able to fit the backup onto iCloud:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211865

I'm not sure what to do if you are getting TB or PB, maybe try to backup/restore everything other than your Health data?

How does that make Apple, who do not participate in this user-to-user forum, aware? Yes, other users are aware, but that’s not how to make Apple aware. What makes Apple “aware” of an issue is to open a case by clicking on the Get Support link at the top of this page, or with the Apple Support app on your phone, or at https://apple.com/feedback or calling Apple support.

Now consider 123 people out of 1.5 BILLION (1,500,000,000) iPhone users. 123/1,500,000,000 = 0.00001% of iPhone users. You have a much, much higher probability of catching COVID.

I have already responded in this thread several days ago, but I have an update for my own particular instance of this problem.

First of all, to review the environment I am working with:

I have an iPhone 11 Pro (non-Max) 512GB, with about 272GB taken up and about 240GB free. The Health app reports 1.61TB used up. I typically do iTunes backups to a Windows 10 based Dell Laptop, which has a 1TB SSD and a 2TB HDD... I do my backups to the HDD, which has about 1.2TB free. Prior to the release of iOS 14 I had been able to run backups; since the 14 upgrade, iTunes fills up my hard drive completely, then crashes and dies without finishing successfully.

I finally reached out to Apple Support on this. IT IS A KNOWN PROBLEM for which they have NO SOLUTION AT THIS TIME. They do, however, offer a few workarounds. While I list them here, understand that you are getting them second-hand from me, plus your getting my opinion on their viability... reach out to Apple yourself if you need clarification, and understand that whatever you do with your hardware and information, that's at your own risk - don't blame me if it goes south on you.

With that out of the way, these are solutions that were suggested to me:

1. Wipe and restart your phone from scratch. (The "well, that IS an option" option, which I immediately set aside.)
2. Wipe your health data and restore from a backup, if you have one. (Another option I reject. As a heart patient, I actually bought my first watch, a Series 2, on my doctor's advice.)
3. Try an iCloud backup. (Riiiggght, if iTunes is going to try and write 2+ TB on my HDD, won't it do the same thing on iCloud? I have a 50GB account, not 2TB.)

Which brings me to a question Apple could not answer: since my iPhone only has 240GB free, yet at the same time Health is erroneously reporting 6.5x that space required, a physical impossibility, yet it blows out my entire 1.2TB of free HDD space, just what in the **** is it actually writing?!

Finally, they offered an alternative that's still not a great one, but seems the most viable one I could take from my standpoint:

4. buy or borrow an external HDD (e.g. 4TB) and try doing a backup to that.

That's what I am going to try... and see what happens. But it is going to take a LOOONNNG time to prove or disprove this out, even as a workaround... because when I tried doing iTunes backups to my laptop, it would take nearly 10 HOURS (on an Intel i7 laptop with 32GB) before failing due to lack of space. Using a portable drive, I would expect it to easily take more than 12 hours to run.

This will take me a few days before I try this out, so please bear with me. Thanks.

IOS 14.2 totally fixes it.

• Workout GPS routes or Health data are prevented from syncing between Apple Watch and iPhone for some users

Guess it was all about a syncing issue between the watch and the phone. Glad they fixed it.

UPDATE: Apple Support confirmed the believe it is an software issue with the new updates.

Advice was to backup the phone to mac/pc and factory reset. Restore backup, the re-pair the watch.

I hit a roadblock immediately as the backup wouldn't work as the Mac is reading the backup size as over 1TB and doesn't have enough space. At the moment I've restored and am backing up from a cloud back up made 2 days ago - fingers crossed so far, the storage issue appears to be resolved with the Health App just having around 225MB (which is more like it!)

UPDATE: Im afraid it didnt work for me either in the end.

I have ended up going extreme and starting from scratch - restoring both watch and phone to factory settings and setting up as new. Not ideal at all as lost messages, activity data etc.

But has ultimately fixed the problem.

Just got off the phone with Apple (I have to say she was brilliant), she was on for 1 1/2 hours! Still non the wiser, she hasn’t heard of or seen this problem before. My watch is not sending the workouts to my activity app either. I am having another call back on Wednesday while they have a look at all the diagnostics from my phone and watch

Mine’s telling me it has petabytes of data 😂

Hi Shaft80, your response is great, although it hasn’t been resolved at least they are aware of it. I agree, the more people that contact Apple the sooner this is resolved.

my call back is scheduled for 19:30 - 20:00 (GMT) tonight (in half an hour) I will update when they call back

Thanks Shawy - I'm in the UK too, I was starting to panic that you were in America and you'd think me impatient, as it's probably not even midday there :)

Hopefully you'll get someone in the know who has a better idea of timeframes.

Hi Shawy - I've just gone though the other posts and noticed that you've had issues with your Apple Watch... can I ask if you've just purchased it? I've upgraded from a Series 3 Watch to a Series 6, and come to think about it, the first time this issue happened to me was yesterday after I'd set up the new Watch. I wonder if the Health app is combining the data multiple times or something... a long shot, but it might be the new Watches causing this as opposed to IOS 14 (or it might just be a huge coincidence).

This is a long shot, but try making an UNENCRYPTED backup to your Mac, because unencrypted backups exclude health data.

As to whether it’s a bug in iOS 14, the answer is probably not, because it hasn’t happened on either of my iPhones and normally a bug like that would result in thousands of posts here. However, something is clearly corrupted in your phone’s storage.

Hi Shaft80, Just got off the phone with Apple, and they have confirmed that they have now received numerous calls etc in relation to the same issue, and the engineers believe that this is an issue linked to the iOS 14 update.

Apple will resolve it in one of 2 ways, 1) being an update (the likely scenario) and 2) public information to apple owners in how to resolve the issues. There is no timeline as to when this will be done and again is down to two elements 1) how many people report the issue direct to Apple rather than on forums/communities, as they do not monitor these and 2) how long it takes to formulate a 'work around'.

So really it is just a waiting game, but it is very important for people to report directly to Apple.

In relation to my apple watch, mine is a series 5, and was working fine up until iOS 14 and iOS 7 (watch) updates. Apple saying that this is directly linked to the health app issues and that MUST NOT unpair, reset etc the watch from the phone, and wait for an update or further advice.