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iCloud Restore for iPhone 6s - Missing Messages/Recent Calls Missing

Day one my wife and I got our new iPhone 6s (with iOS 9.0). We did an iCloud restore from our iPhone 5s with iOS 9.0.1 and it was successful bringing all our data including Messages and Recent Calls. The phones were then updated to iOS 9.0.1. Everything was working fine...


My phone had an issue which ended up getting me a replacement iPhone 6s (iOS 9.0). From here I tried restoring from the past iPhone 6s (with iOS 9.0.1) iCloud restore. Unfortunately, Messages and Recent Calls did not come over from the past iPhone 6s backup and I even tried various of the iPhone 6s time stamped backups. I also updated the new iPhone 6s to 9.0.2 and still no difference with the restore. It wasn't until I reverted back to my iPhone 5s backup (iOS 9.0.1) that it would bring the Messages and Recent Calls over. Note that the inclusion of the Messages and Recent Calls is evident immediately after the initial restart from restore (when the phone starts downloading apps). This has me worried going forth and here is why!


I've done a new backup and a little digging. I've noticed that both my new backup for the iPhone 6s and wife's are both smaller than our iPhone 5s backup was. Example for my device backups: iPhone 5s: 18 GB, iPhone 6s: 17.1 GB. Note that this seems backwards as if there was any difference for whatever reason, I would imagine that it be on the larger resolution device. Also, this difference in size would seem reasonable for not including Messages (includes messages, videos, audio, etc.) and Recent Calls. There may even be other data that this did not bring over as I did not see it benefit in losing years of messages for a week of new data, i.e. I did not research the loss to the full extent.


Has anyone else experienced this issue recently with an iPhone 6s or maybe there is a known issue I just have not stumbled across.

iPhone 6s, iOS 9.0.2

Posted on Oct 3, 2015 5:37 AM

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Posted on Oct 13, 2015 4:28 PM

I Spent 6 hours with the geniuses and no one thinks this is a big issue!!!!


not sure if you noticed, but after a restore where all your messages are gone, if you do get new messages, you will not get notified, they will not be in chronological order, if you get multiple messages, the order doesn't change, and most importantly, if you turn your phone off and back on, all those messages will be erased. (this last part they "fixed" by resting settings)

198 replies

Dec 3, 2015 4:33 PM in response to r-m

So I tried my backup I created tonight (with the "broken" data), and just restored that from iCloud.

Confirms that new backups from the "broken" data will not work. It has to be an existing backup that's already on iCloud.


So, I'm going to restore my 14th November backup and talk to Apple again tomorrow.

Dec 3, 2015 5:30 PM in response to Tawkers

Same here. When I first encountered the problem I "solved" it by using a 5-week old backup. I had an Apple engineer put me through 30 minutes of gathering backup data today, apparently for nothing because they had already made a fix. But going back to the previously corrupted backup would set me back the same amount of weeks' worth of texts. The engineer said there would be no way to merge texts from the interim. So any of us unlucky ones who were the first to experience this glitch are S.O.L.

Dec 3, 2015 7:38 PM in response to r-m

Not fixed for me yet either. Just tried another restore from iCloud from my previous iPhone 6s. Got stuck on the white screen.


Possibilities:

1. The fix needs to be rolled out to all servers. This will take some time.

2. The fix needs to be applied to specific accounts. This will require a call to support to apply it for each account.

3. The fix has already been applied to all accounts and servers, however it does not work for all.


Seems that a support call will be required to find out.

Dec 3, 2015 10:07 PM in response to latrans

Well, I found this thread after the last few frustrated hours. Unfortunately, I can confirm that the issue is still present. Everything has been fine with my 6S since launch. I restored from a backup of my 5S with no issues way back then. Been using the phone and updated to 9.1. Noticed a few weird things with my phone in the last couple days so I figured I'd just restore my phone and see if that cleared up the issues. I did a backup of my 6S to iCloud and LUCKILY to iTunes encrypted, too. When I did a restore of the backup I had just made to the exact same device, I got the white screen of death. No amount of restarts, multiple restores, etc. helped the situation. All ended up with lost data. I have since restored the iTunes backup which seemed to avoid the issue. Really sad that this problem still progrsses for so long across so many iOS versions. I wonder if I should go ahead and delete that iCloud backup and hopefully a fresh one will resolve the issue.

Dec 4, 2015 4:41 AM in response to pardthemonster

Well the restore didn't work for me. I tried restoring from my November 6th backup, hoping to finally resolve this nightmare once and for all. The restore is the same as it was before, all messages, app data, notes missing completely and photos imported in reverse chronological order again. My phone still has almost all apps crashing when opened. Now i have all my data from the past month missing as well since I did a restore from November 6th. Why is the restore working for some people but not others ? I am beyond upset and find it unacceptable that this problem has dragged on for a month now with no resolution.

Dec 6, 2015 7:52 AM in response to User84456

Hello all. it seems that Apple has issued a serve side fix as some other have mentioned. will solve some of your issues. If you have a backup in iCloud that was made prior to all the issues you should be able to restore it ok now. For me I had deleted my iCloud backups several times so the data from back in October is gone. I deleted all iCloud backups and made a new one on Saturday. I then wiped my phone and restored and everything restored as it should.


I am confident that all future backups and restores will work correctly. For those have have lost data i don't know if you will be able to recover it. If you have a local backup with all your data, load it, delete your iCloud backup and then create a new one. That should start you with a fresh and complete iCloud backup. That is what I had to do.


Hope thos helps

Dec 6, 2015 9:08 AM in response to r-m

I First noticed the issue at the beginning of October about a week after getting my 6s. I lost about 10 days of data back then. I restored to the last back up of my 6 (not s) and then started backing up via iTunes to be safe. All in all I oy lost about 10 days. From that point on I would create iCloud back ups and restore to experiment. Always backing up to iTunes first. Not until yesterday did a back up created on the 6s restore correctly back to the 6s. Had I not started backing up local I would be in the same boat as many others.

Dec 6, 2015 12:59 PM in response to User84456

The fix is on the server side. Unfortunately You may not be able to recover any lost data. If you delete your current iCloud backup and then create a new one, it should perform as designed. This is what happened to me. Backups are now restoring properly. I was not able to get all my data back but all back ups now should be complete. Not a complete solution to lost data but a fix for future back ups. If there is data in you current back up that you absolutely need then dont delete it. Call apple to see if there is anything they can do. Doubtful at this point.

iCloud Restore for iPhone 6s - Missing Messages/Recent Calls Missing

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