confused about icloud photo library and icloud backup of photos

here is a screen shot. the number is even lower now. and i've also put a screen shot of what my years view looks like. see the size of the block for 2007? all the years are the exact same size, unless they had less photos than that. and look at all the gray boxes where thumbnails should be. it has looked this way for months

thank you, could you please shed some light on the other concerns I raised? specifically, why it is taking my phone and ipad such a long period of time to load all of the optimized photos into the photos app on two separate brand new devices which have plenty of space? the status in settings - photos will often say it is uploading tens of thousands of photos, but they are already in the cloud and not on the devices and need to be downloaded not uploaded

eric, the first link you shared is how to back up your iphone but i didn't need help with that and it makes no mention of photos whatsoever, so i'm not sure why you sent that to this thread

in the second link you shared, about icloud backups, which was relevant to my post, it says "iCloud backups include nearly all data and settings stored on your device. iCloud backups don't include: Data that's already stored in iCloud, like Contacts, Calendars, Notes, My Photo Stream, and iCloud Photo Library"

every photo on my phone has come from my icloud photo library. so what is making up the 42 GB of photos in my icloud backup? all of those are already in icloud photo library, so the page you sent says the backup should not be containing those.

please clarify, thanks

thank you, i appreciate it eric.

in settings - photos - it says it is currently uploading 47,063 items but it seems static.

i would report on what it says on the ipad but i decided to do a full reset to see if it will fix this issue and it's currently undergoing the restore from its cloud backup completed this morning

i was really hoping not to have to do that and re-download the entire music collection, but i'm just so tired on this

if it works i'm planning to do the same with my iphone just to be done with this once and for all

i'm not sure what you mean when you said try settings/icloud and slide off syncing because there is no such option on the settings/icloud page.

now it is at 45,009 as items left to upload, but as i said earlier, have witnessed it re-uploading counts up to 70,000 and watched them go down to zero time and time and time again. do any experts besides eric have any thoughts to add to these strange and annoying issues i'm experiencing with what's supposed to be a seamless system?

i counted the amount of tiny thumbnails in the years view and per year it is 24 rows and 32 columns, or 768 thumbnails...i have about 71,000 photos and videos in the library...the recent years should each have 5-6k photos... so why is it showing such a small number of them and why is each year maxed out at only 768 thumbnails?

also i should add i keep my phone on wifi at home and at work and charging pretty much all the time - wifi at home is 230 MB/s and at work it is 500 MB/s