iPhone Backup Larger than Storage

Hello all,

Ive been having a lot of trouble with my phone and I am extremely frustrated especially with Apple. It’s a bit of a story, so bear with me.

Devices: iPhone 12 256GB, iOS Version 15.2.1

2020 MacBook Air (M1), macOS Monterey Version 12.1, 500GB flash storage + 8GB RAM

I have a 256 gb iPhone 12 since April 2021. I started having issues with the buttons in Nov 2021. On Jan 22, 2022, I backed up my iPhone to my 2020 MacBook Air that has 500 gb of storage. I had 483 gb of storage available on the MacBook, and 248 gb of iPhone data to back up. I had a lot of issues with backing it up, because it would stop and say that the backup was too large, which would be impossible because the iPhone storage is much much less than the storage in the MacBook! I deleted pretty much everything on the MacBook to free up storage, including all past backups. I contacted Apple Support and they helped me finally back it up. HOWEVER, the backup turned out to be 422 gb of data!!! How did 248 gb of iPhone data turn into 422 gb?? Anywho, on Jan 23, 2022, i took the iPhone to the Apple Store to be repaired. Obviously, the iPhone was completely erased.

After the repair, I started trying to restore the backup onto my phone. The backup is on the MacBook. No luck. Basically, while the restore is in progress, it suddenly stops and doesn’t tell me why. I have an idea as to why: I’m trying to restore 422 gb of data onto a 256 gb device. But, it will usually give a little notification that there isn’t enough storage to restore the backup. I had this issue happen last year and the amazing advice Apple gave me was to buy a completely new phone with more storage, which is how I ended up with this iPhone 12. But here I am running into this same issue and there is no notification at all.

Jan 24, 2022. Ive spent 3 hours on the phone with Apple Support and not even the Tier 2 genius knew how to help. We did everything: update both MacBook and iPhone, try to restore a different way, no luck. At all. I’m getting ******. I lost all of my data. Tier 2 genius advises I go to the Apple Store. So, I hauled everything back to the Apple Store that same day. Geniuses there didn’t know how to help. The tech helping me advised that I back up my files from my MacBook to an external hard drive, then delete the files off the MacBook to free up space. They figured that a possible issue was that that there wasn’t enough storage on the MacBook to successfully complete the restoration. Which brings us to now.

Im a student and I use my MacBook for everything, so it was difficult to find a time to properly do this. Today is Feb 11, 2022 and I was able to move my files from MacBook to an external hard drive. I deleted all the files off the MacBook, so now I have 31 gb of free storage on MacBook. Erased my phone and started the restoration. And you guessed it. No luck. I’m back at square 1.

Does anybody have ANY advice on what to do? I lost my data and this is a relatively new phone. I’m not about to purchase a new device just to get all of my data back. Im very confused as to how 248 gb of data magically turned into 422 gb. And Im extremely upset that I lost everything important to me. Any help would be greatly greatly appreciated. Thank you all!

TL;DR I backed up 248 gb of iPhone storage onto 500 gb MacBook, which took up 422 gb of storage on the MacBook. iPhone was erased for repair. Now, I’m unable to restore the backup and I’m stuck with a completely fresh phone.