iPhone backup restore fails due to lack of empty space

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iPhone backup restore fails due to lack of empty space

Restore iphone backup fails. Device without empty space.

My iphone was with an issue in the usb-c charger port. The support at apple store asked me to back it up and empty before send it to repair.

So I did, the backup was made in my macbook and the iphone was repaired. When we tried to restore the backup it fails due to lack of empty space availabe in the device.

Things that I tried:

check if the iphone after repaired has the same storage size as before, and it was;
update mac and iphone to latest version available for each;
restore latest iphone firmware via macbook before trying to restore backup;
search if it's possible to move backup made in my macbook to icloud so iphone could restore it.

Is there any possibility to recover it?

iPhone 16

Posted on Feb 8, 2026 7:37 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Lawrence Finch

Level 10

229,990 points

Feb 8, 2026 7:55 AM in response to wfsilva

Do you sync data to iCloud? If you do, turn off iCloud sync and try again. It sounds like your iPhone storage was close to full before you backed it up, and updating or reinstalling iOS reduced the amount of space available to restore the backup. How much free storage did you have before you did the backup, if you know. If you had a lot of free storage before the backup (at least 10% of its capacity) then the backup could be corrupt.

One option is to restore the backup to a different iPhone with more capacity, delete some stuff on that phone, then back it up and restore that backup to the old phone. You can buy a new phone from Apple to do this; you have 14 days to return it. Or just keep it and sell your old iPhone.

You can’t move a computer backup to iCloud, and that wouldn’t solve the problem anyway.

Most data on an iPhone is now synced to something, for example, Mail, contacts, calendars and notes sync to your email server or servers; most game results sync to game servers, all financial data lives on your bank’s system, social media is not stored on your iPhone at all. Thus, starting fresh may not result in much lost data.

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