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Level 1

42 points

Can't delete iCloud backup, storage full

After upgrading my iPhone 6 Plus to IOS 9, my iCloud storage shows 5GB of my 25GB available. It shows an iPad Air (not yet updated to iOS9) backup of 516MB, and an iPhone backup of 0 KB, which I cannot delete (This backup cannot be deleted at this time). Documents and Data only 6.9MB, but only 5 GB available, and not enough room to continue to back up the iPhone. The 19GB iPhone backup appears to have been corrupted and cannot be deleted or updated by the phone. Looks like lots of folks are having similar issues. Any solutions?

Apple has been spending lots of energy creating new, exciting products but has been lax on supporting the back end, which is just as important. iCloud for Windows still not updated for Windows 10, and iTunes has issues with Windows 10, not resolved in iTunes 12.3. Come on, Apple!

iPhone 6 Plus, iOS 9

Posted on Sep 19, 2015 11:49 AM

Best reply

JosephWit Author

Level 1

42 points

Posted on Sep 19, 2015 1:04 PM

on the phone: Settings- General- Storage & iCloud Usage, or Settings- iCloud- Storage- Manage Storage (either one) shows Backups: Joe's iPhone (ThisiPhone) 0KB. Click on the backup, it shows Latest Backup- Never (since I tried to delete it- before it showed 9/16 which was the last backup before iOS 9 upgrade), backup size 0 bytes. Option to DELETE BACKUP brings up "Do you want to TURN OFF BACKUP and delete all backup data for this iPhone from iCloud?" Clicking "Turn Off and Delete" shows "deleting....."and it stops. But the iPhone backup 0KB is still listed, and there are still only 5GB of space available - the 0KB backup is taking up its usual 19GB, and has NOT been deleted. The option to delete is gone until I restart the phone.

There is no other way on the iPhone to turn off iCloud backup, is there?

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51 replies

JosephWit Author

Level 1

42 points

Sep 19, 2015 2:32 PM in response to Winston Churchill

Where can I turn off items to back up? I only see options to turn iCloud back up on, not to configure it down from 19GB content to less than 5GB.

Sep 19, 2015 2:38 PM in response to JosephWit

If you go to Settings>iCloud>Storage>Manage Storage> and click on the device in question, you will then see a list of items below the backup info that are turned on (or off). What is turned on is what is backing up. What is turned off is not included in any backups that are being made.

Cheers,

JosephWit Author

Level 1

42 points

Sep 19, 2015 3:52 PM in response to gail from maine

well... there is clearly a directory corruption somewhere at their end - I would rather Apple fix it than get too extreme. I don't want to jeopardize my contacts and calendars... I have tried deleting the backup from iPhone, OSX and Windows - its not at my end, and it looks like a file table error.

Sep 19, 2015 9:53 PM in response to JosephWit

I was just letting you know where you could turn off items to back up as you asked. Contacts and Calendars are not included in an iCloud backup. Neither are Notes, Photo Stream, Mail, or Reminders. These are continually sync'd with iCloud so they are not backe up.

What you will see in your backup list are things like Photos (camera roll, sync'd and saved photos) and Apps.

Cheers,

JosephWit Author

Level 1

42 points

Sep 19, 2015 10:40 PM in response to gail from maine

Well, after turning off all apps in the iPhone backup settings (except Yelp - thought I might need to leave at least one), I was able to create a new iCloud backup 1.4GB in size, which fit in the 5GB I showed remaining. I now show 3.6GB remaining. There is no indication that there are 2 backups present except for the missing 19GB of space. Creating a new backup did not get rid of the corrupted invisible old one.
I assume that since I am paying for iCloud storage, Apple support will have to talk to me, hard as it is to reach a real person there...

Thanks, JW

milypan

Level 1

4 points

Sep 19, 2015 10:50 PM in response to JosephWit

I deleted all my backups and still had 2.6 GB of space consumed. I strongly suspect that what happened is that at some point a backup didn't complete – most likely on my iPad – and the 2.6 GB is reserved for an incomplete backup. This might be related to enrolling in the iOS 9 Public Beta program (something I greatly regret doing now...what I didn't appreciate is just what a huge pain in the *** it would be to get off the program). The reason I suspect that an incomplete backup is to blame is that I had to restore my iPad to get back to the normal release builds, and as soon as I restored my iPad to factory settings and synced with iCloud another 2+ GB of space got allocated to backups on iCloud.com (which corresponded to the expected size of the new iPad backup) even though no new deletable backups appeared in my Manage Storage settings. Once I turned off iCloud backups on my iPad, then the extra 2 GB of backups on iClould.com disappeared. So I suspect there's some version of my iPad that started to backup but got interrupted, and then the iPad got wiped, and now there's no way that I can delete the backup because that version of the iPad doesn't exist anymore.

Please let us know if you get any help from Apple Support. Given the very limited user options for troubleshooting this issue, I'm pretty much to the point where I'll just pay an extra $20/year to upgrade to 200 GB and stop thinking about it. I don't even care about the money, but it's just annoying to think that I might be paying them more for not fixing their own bugs.

Sep 19, 2015 10:56 PM in response to JosephWit

Now that you created a new one, have you tried the Settings>iCloud>Storage>Manage Storage, select device, Delete Backup route again?

Cheers,

JosephWit Author

Level 1

42 points

Sep 19, 2015 11:08 PM in response to gail from maine

It shows only the new smaller 1.4GB backup. Delete fails for this one, same as before "unable to delete right now".

Phone call scheduled with Apple support 10:30 tmrw morning...

Sep 19, 2015 11:13 PM in response to JosephWit

Best of luck! 🙂

Cheers,

Sep 20, 2015 2:28 PM in response to JosephWit

Exactly the same thing has happened to me on my iPhone 5s. It says the last back up was 0kb, yet 14 gigs remains unaccounted for. Deleting the backup doesn't work and it won't allow me to create a new backup. Tried this on my iPad 2 Air and no problems. I successfully backed up my phone to iTunes. It seems to be an issue with the iCloud server and is very frustrating. I plan to get a new 6s, but my concern is I might have the same problem if there is an issue with my iCloud account.

milypan

Level 1

4 points

Sep 20, 2015 3:10 PM in response to JosephWit

When they released your storage space, did it only wipe your backups (if even that)? I don't want all of my iCloud documents and data getting wiped out in the process..

JosephWit Author

Level 1

42 points

Sep 20, 2015 3:13 PM in response to milypan

No it didn't. Other backups and docs still there.

Sep 22, 2015 1:55 AM in response to JosephWit

Something similar happened to me.

Till 3 days ago, I was using iCloud backup just fine, I had just 5gb so the Photo library backup was turned off.

When Apple announced prices for iCloud storage would go down, I decided to give it a try in order to use iCloud Photo Library.

After 2 days uploading, my iCloud Photo Library accounted for 12.2gb, fine. But then my iPhone backup was taking 10.2gb... iCloud was backing up my photos through 2 channels...

I decided to wait one day before turning off the Photo backup, but then today this option disappeared! The backup was taking 10.2gb but the option to uncheck Photos wasn't there anymore.

So I decided to turned off the whole backup for this iPhone. Can't. I get the error.

This is when I visited this thread.

I then entered the iCloud settings through my iPad, and deleted the iPhone backup just fine!

The 10.2gb aren't there anymore.

The iPhone is backing up again now, but there is a small phrase at the bottom of its backup page: "Photo Library is backed up separately as part of iCloud Photo Library"

Good!

The iPhone finished its backup, it's just 340 mb now.

Hope it works for you!

JosephWit Author

Level 1

42 points

Sep 22, 2015 11:43 AM in response to Evizerate

Glad you got it straightened out.

For me, it was definitely a corruption of the backup directory on the Apple server. Nothing I could do from any device worked. They also saw that had less than 4GB of files listed, but only 5GB out of my 25GB available. Apple tech support had a supervisor "release my storage space", at their end, which immediately restored the missing space, but did not erase any of the files present. I was then able to make a new 19GB backup of my phone, and all seems to be working OK now.
I'm sure Apple supports this, because I am paying for the storage. I wish we could get that level of support on other issues!

milypan

Level 1

4 points

Sep 23, 2015 11:32 AM in response to JosephWit

I had scheduled an Apple Support call for 11:30 today, but somehow in the period before the call the problem resolved itself (i.e., I am no longer "missing" about 3GB of space). Well, saves time for both me and the support people.

Can't delete iCloud backup, storage full