After restore: no backup possible - iCloud "full"

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linnie2011 Author

Level 1

18 points

After restore: no backup possible - iCloud "full"

I have an iCloud account with 25GB space, from which 8,8GB are free.

I have an iPhone 6, that has been constantly backed up to this account, including photos and videos (which take up about 13GB).

Now, today, my iPhone was exchanged at the Genius Bar. Of course, I have done both full local and iCloud backups, before, to have identical backups.

I have restored my new iPhone from the local backup (since I wanted to have a full restore including settings, passwords, account data, photos and apps, so I used the password-protected local backup from iTunes).

Now, iCloud tells me, it cannot backup this new iPhone to iCloud, since there is not enough storage space left. It says, it needs about 14GB of space, which exceeds the remaining 8.8GB of free space on the iCloud account.

I just don't get this: from the last iCloud backup with the previous iPhone6, nothing has changed, no new photos, not new data, nothing. All data stored in the cloud is exactly the data, that has been restored to the new, exchanged iPhone.

So please, any help is most appreciated: why does iCloud not "understand", that there is no new data?

Then, in my new, exchanded iPhone, I went to iCloud settings and deleted the old backup (from the previous iPhone) in the hope, that this would free the iCloud-space and I could just backup the new iPhone to the iCloud, again. But even that did not help, culprit seem to be the large "Foto-Mediathek" (German expression, don't know the english term) of 13GB, which I cannot delete nor make iCloud understand, that on the new iPhone, this data is exactly the same data as before....

I hope, I could make myself understandable and thank you for any suggestion or response!

iPhone 6, iOS 8.2

Posted on Apr 1, 2015 4:18 PM

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Answer 1

Apr 1, 2015 4:23 PM in response to linnie2011

If you have restored, the back up you are now attempting will be considered a new back up and in addition to one already there that you have restored from. Could this explain the situation.

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Answer 2

linnie2011 Author

Level 1

18 points

Apr 1, 2015 10:43 PM in response to Winston Churchill

Winston Churchill 😉 , thanks for your reply!

Yes, this could explain part of it. But: I went into Settings, iCloud, Storage ("8.8GB available), Manage Storage. There, I could see the small Backup from my iPad and the backup from the previous iPhone. I deleted the backup from the previous iPhone (since I had a full local backup, I had not problem doing that). Then I tried to backup the new iPhone and got the error message, that there was not enough storage.

I'll attach a screenshot - as you can see, biggest file is the iCloud Photo Library, and there is no way to tell iCloud "hey, all that's in there is from my previous iPhone, there is no need to backup any of this, just concentrate on the rest of the iPhone data". Also, there is no way, to delete the iCloud Photo Library entirely (which I would do) - it would not disappear for 30 days...

So I am completely stuck, even though I only needed "net" storage space of about 2.7GB to backup my new iPhone (which with 8.8GB free space would be no problem), iCloud would not let me do that.

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Answer 3

Apr 2, 2015 3:39 AM in response to linnie2011

If you tap the section that says 'This Phone', you should be taken to your back up options where you can see and choose which data you want to include in a back up.

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Answer 4

linnie2011 Author

Level 1

18 points

Apr 2, 2015 5:07 AM in response to Winston Churchill

Winston: that, unfortunately, does not solve my problem - there is nothing NEW to back up, and I do not want to exclude anything from being backed up.

As I said: the content in the iCloud and on my phone is EXACTLY the same, but due to whatever Apple does internally, it refrains from accepting that and refrains from backing up, since it seems to treat the iCloud-content as "old" and the iPhone-content as "new" (which basically means: two separate amounts of data.

Also, imho, the iCloud Photo Library seems to play a major role in this issue - again, the content on the iPhone and on the iCloud Photo Library is exactly the same, but the backup process does not seem to accept that.

All in all, I am stuck, since I even would be willing to erase ALL content on my iCloud and back up my iPhone and the iPad from scratch. But there is no way to empty the iCloud.

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