Q: iCloud storage full but 5GB free?

Do you still have this problem, as I seem to have just caught it.

I am using an iPhone 5. I have backed up to iCloud regularly many times before with this phone.  My previous iCloud backup about a month ago was under 800MB. I recently tried to back up the same apps and content on the same device again and got the "This iPhone cannot be backed up because there is not enough iCloud storage available". I went to Settings > iCloud>Storage & Backup>Manage Storage and unchecked every single App. This still left a calculated backup size of 5.8GB. Given that all sources of content to be backed up are unchecked, I have no idea what this 5.8GB refers to. It effectively prevents me from backing up any data at all.

As suggested by earlier threads and other forums I deleted my existing backup from iCloud and closed iCloud before reopening. This had no effect and now I have no backup (I will back up to my PC as soon as I can).

Someone help me clear this mystery backup data that is stopping me from backing up my iPhone. If something goes wrong with my iPhone, or it is stolen, then I am effectively stuffed!

Try this,

sign out your Apple ID then resign in.

hope my answer is helpful for you.

Thanks for the suggestion. What do you mean sign out then sign in, where?

Setting>>iCloud>>your Apple ID.

just like reboot your iPhone.

I am still having this problem.. I deleted all Icloud backups and my next backup is still 5.7gb..

Hi daghstdrummer,

I spent hours on the phone to Apple (and then Apple's über experts took a few more days to get back to me) on this one. It's a crazy iPhone backup glitch. And it's all about your Messages (as in SMS). All those messages are backed up, including any media that you have ever sent or has ever been sent to you. This cannot be turned off in setting, nor is it listed in the itemised list of programs!! Everybody will have this problem sooner or later!

The official (and seemingly only) fix is to troll through your messages and delete any that have media (photos/videos) attached to them.  To test this theory you can just delete a few (recent) bigger messages and see what that does to your 5.7GB backup.

Good luck!!

Thanks this worked for me! I was ready to pull my hair out!

I too have this problem!

Apple wanedt to charge me £28 for storage and at the moment funds are tight.

I turned off all App backups etc inc camera roll, backed up my photos to Time Capsule and it says I need an .7GB to enabe me to do a backup!

Is is true that 'messages' takes a lot of space up?

How can we find out what actually is taking the space?

Cheers guys.

I have 20gb of space and only using 5GB but I get the same warning.  Why would this happen?

Read my earlier post.

Photos and videos stored in "Messages" (i.e. SMS) take up massive amounts of space and are not shown in the "iCloud backup" data information.

Go through your messages and delete any with photos and or video.

This worked!!!  I iMessaged 5 videos last night and my phone tried to backup later and couldn't due to insufficient storage.  I tried deleting those videos and other conversations from my messages, then rebooted my phone, and it worked.  Thanks for the help!!!

My iCloud gets easily clogged with Camera Roll photos so I switched off Camera Roll under Settings > iCloud Backup & Storage > This iphone > Camera Roll.

This worked to get rid of the error message but is only a workaround and not a real solution. The solution would be to do this in combination with backing up your iPhone on your computer via iTunes or via the free method described here: How to backup iPhone despite not enough iCloud storage available.

Hi You can buy more ICloud storage. But I would do a Factory Restore this will get rid of any bugs. Just use the same Apple ID & password then you will get all your data back. Cheers Brian

The iPhone stores deleted photos for a period of time, so even if you delete them from the device they will be backed up to iCloud.  You can go to "Deleted Photos" and remove them completely by selecting all the photos and pressing "Delete" again.  Your back up should work after this.

Don't know if you are aware of this, but you responded to a post that was written in 2013....

Also, unless you delete tons of photos, an issue with enough storage for an iCloud backup is not likely to be affected by the photos in the Recently Deleted album.

Cheers,

GB