Backup of iPhone - slow or stopped?

Question

Backup of iPhone - slow or stopped?

Hard to tell if anything is happening! It's been >hours< and no change in status. Still 'backing up' my phone. How do I know it isn't just hung? (I'll bet a lot that it is!) Is there any way to find out progress? Is there anything I can do for 'force' a change?

I'm backing up iPhone X to a Mac Mini (M1), using USB(C)-lightning cable direct to mini, data going to SSD. There is a backup listed from about a month ago. I think I'm current (maybe that's a problem?) with iOS (16.3.1) and MacOS (13.1). Activity monitor on mac shows nothing remarkable - lots of memory available, less than 10% CPU use, <1KB/s network traffic (does that include the USB port?), disk activity less than 100KB/s.

This situation raises many question for me: Does this backup use any of the previous backup information/data to reduce data transfer? (I'm betting "no") There appear to be way too many 'solutions' available on web - software products, some (not all) of which even have readable English descriptions. Is that really necessary? How badly did Apple drop the ball on this? Why are there seemingly no controls and no reporting on what's going on? What am I missing in this area?

Posted on Feb 18, 2023 4:56 PM

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Answer 1

Feb 20, 2023 5:06 PM in response to chuckbl

After >a few< restarts of both devices, I was eventually re-asked on my phone to 'trust' the computer. (these devices have been 'trusted' for a while, and photo import has worked every time). That was progress, and subsequently allowed the backup to occur followed by synch. I'm still baffled by Apple advice to update iTunes, as I didn't think that means was supported for quite a while now.

So, ultimately, real problem solved.

(To answer Chuckbl's questions; I believe I'd need to purchase space in iCloud to cover my phone - that and other reasons-not really interested; I had tried multiple ports on the Mini, and different cables, all with similar unknown results, and photo uploads were working just fine so there wasn't great cause to suspect that; other devices seemed to back up ok... but then so did my phone a month ago; I had also tried re-starting devices before posting, but apparently not in the required sequence?)

But it still doesn't answer the 'how do I know if it's working' question. In this case, the answer was 'no'. But other than taking forever, there isn't a solid feedback mechanism for showing the user that it's hung. c.f. file transfers, where both the status bar on the copy updates and the activity monitor gives some idea of what data rates are. Where do I look to find out? (and for now, never mind the only way to force a change is 'turn it off and try again' which IMHO isn't an indicator of a solid system)

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Answer 2

chuckbl

Community Specialist

Feb 20, 2023 1:39 PM in response to wishing_it_worked

Hello wishing_it_worked,

For difficulties with backing up your iPhone using your Mac, you'll want to take the steps below:

Try again after each step

1. Make sure your Mac or PC is up-to-date. If you're using iTunes, make sure that you have the latest version of iTunes.

2. Restart all your devices.

3. If you own more than one computer, try to make a backup on your other Mac or PC. Or, use iCloud to back up your device and restore from your iCloud backup.

You can also find those steps in this resource: If you can't back up your iOS or iPadOS device to a computer or restore it from a backup - Apple Support

Should that still persist, are you able to create an iCloud backup without any difficulties?

Do you experience the same behavior with another cable or port? How about if you try to make a backup of a different device, if applicable?

Let us know, and we'll keep moving forward based on those details.

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Backup of iPhone - slow or stopped?

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