Retrieving iCloud data to a new iPhone

[Buzzrock 14902]

Fucking hell Apple stuff is great until it isn’t.

 

Daughter has once again abused an iPhone to death (is it too much to ask kids to treat a $600 device like

it costs $600?) I found an old iPhone in a drawer but when she went to set it up it said there were no iCloud backups to restore from. I guess she never turned that setting on. But when she goes to iCloud.com all her pictures and email and notes and stuff are there. How do I get them onto the new (old) phone?

 

Difficulty: she REALLY wants all her text messages back. They currently only exist on her MacBook and aren’t being synced to iCloud. Is there a way to get those back onto this new (old) phone? Can she just turn on iCloud sync and then they will eventually replicate to her phone?

[immamac 42834]

3 minutes ago, Buzzrock said:

 

Fucking hell Apple stuff is great until it isn’t.

 

Daughter has once again abused an iPhone to death (is it too much to ask kids to treat a $600 device like

it costs $600?) I found an old iPhone in a drawer but when she went to set it up it said there were no iCloud backups to restore from. I guess she never turned that setting on. But when she goes to iCloud.com all her pictures and email and notes and stuff are there. How do I get them onto the new (old) phone?

 

Difficulty: she REALLY wants all her text messages back. They currently only exist on her MacBook and aren’t being synced to iCloud. Is there a way to get those back onto this new (old) phone? Can she just turn on iCloud sync and then they will eventually replicate to her phone?

 

when she logs into her iCloud account on the phone it should all just work 

[thunderlounge 7813]

Unless the old phone you’re transferring to can’t run the current os?

But as Imma said, logging into the account should pull down texts/pics/whatever else was turned on to store on icloud. 

[Buzzrock 14902]

It pulled down a few recent pics but that was all. Does it just need time?

None of her apps were there but I guess she can just reinstall those. She’s mostly concerned about pics and texts. There’s no danger of syncing the new “empty” phone and wiping all that out, right?

[immamac 42834]

8 minutes ago, Buzzrock said:

It pulled down a few recent pics but that was all. Does it just need time?

None of her apps were there but I guess she can just reinstall those. She’s mostly concerned about pics and texts. There’s no danger of syncing the new “empty” phone and wiping all that out, right?

No that’s not how iCloud works. It’s designed to push out your iMessages everywhere. 

her texts are gone. Her iMessages are likely preserved somewhere like her Mac. She can likely buy an iCloud subscription from her Mac and backup iMessage from there then it’ll sync everywhere. 

If your daughter doesn’t know how to protect her data or doesn’t take regular backups this is an important life lesson especially for the younger generation and why it’s worth being paranoid about losing all your data or apple locking you out. You should always always always have a backup of any data you care about on devices that you own. 

you can back up nearly everything on iPhone to a USB drive with a lightning connector. Sandisk sells them, pny sells them, a bunch of cheap Chinese clones on amazon sell them. Worth the $50 one time purchase. 

You can also invest in a home mini pc like these ones from umbrel or I can build you one for cheaper and pre configure it before I ship it to you/you pick it up. You can put all the apps that back up your stuff on it and it is basically like having all the cloud services for free forever. Ofc you should back that up to a hard drive or something that you can plug in. Use the cloud for what it’s good for. Remote copies of the most important data. 

https://umbrel.com/

[destroya 374]

You can tell her that some guy from the internet said this is a good opportunity for her to learn that she should treat a $600 phone like a $600 phone. 

[Nice Guy Eddie 13507]

Maybe she has multiple iCloud accounts for a forgotten or other reason that she doesn't want to say. 

[immamac 42834]

23 minutes ago, destroya said:

You can tell her that some guy from the internet said this is a good opportunity for her to learn that she should treat a $600 phone like a $600 phone. 

Thats not what I said at all. Data is often worth more than the device and if it's gone is irreplaceable. This is a functional lesson not one of value. 

[destroya 374]

13 minutes ago, immamac said:

Thats not what I said at all. Data is often worth more than the device and if it's gone is irreplaceable. This is a functional lesson not one of value. 

Wasn’t talking about you or anything you said.

[Doc Daneeka 6769]

3 hours ago, immamac said:

Thats not what I said at all. Data is often worth more than the device and if it's gone is irreplaceable. This is a functional lesson not one of value. 

As someone who recently relied on iCloud to retrieve 36,058 texts that turned into a 2,134 page PDF, I cannot agree more with your statement. If you have something you want to keep, act like it and don’t just presume it will magically manage itself. 

Edited February 16 by Doc Daneeka

[Buzzrock 14902]

Thanks for all the tips. She set her MacBook to sync all her iMessages and pics to iCloud, set the phone up as new, and synced everything back to the phone. She had to reinstall her apps but she was mostly concerned about iMessages and pics. 
 

I’ve been in IT my whole career so I certainly understand data protection. I assumed that when you set up an iPhone it automatically turned on backups to the cloud. Turns out no. But it’s set to do that now so when she inevitably destroys this one there will be a backup. 

[elfenix 34221]

15 hours ago, immamac said:

You can also invest in a home mini pc like these ones from umbrel or I can build you one for cheaper and pre configure it before I ship it to you/you pick it up. You can put all the apps that back up your stuff on it and it is basically like having all the cloud services for free forever. Ofc you should back that up to a hard drive or something that you can plug in. Use the cloud for what it’s good for. Remote copies of the most important data. 

https://umbrel.com/

is the "app store" just a bunch of docker containers?

[immamac 42834]

2 minutes ago, elfenix said:

is the "app store" just a bunch of docker containers?

Yes, there's a more advanced OS system called TrueNAS Scale if you are looking to run a lightweight Kubernetes instance and use helm charts or operators.

[immamac 42834]

TrueCharts | TrueCharts

 

[Francisco 2.0 32386]

On 2/16/2024 at 10:17 PM, Buzzrock said:

I’ve been in IT my whole career so I certainly understand data protection. I assumed that when you set up an iPhone it automatically turned on backups to the cloud. Turns out no. But it’s set to do that now so when she inevitably destroys this one there will be a backup. 

Well, er, sort of.

Everyone gets the free 5GB (lulz) tier.  But that's not close to being enough in 2024 for ample storage.  So...she needs to pony up .99 per month for the 50GB tier, at minimum.  

Wife of a friend of mine lost her iPhone.  She had the 5GB plan and iCloud backup turned on. But because the storage was long tapped out, her most recent backup was a year or so old, plus she lost countless photos.  

 

 

 

[Buzzrock 14902]

3 hours ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

Well, er, sort of.

Everyone gets the free 5GB (lulz) tier.  But that's not close to being enough in 2024 for ample storage.  So...she needs to pony up .99 per month for the 50GB tier, at minimum.  

Wife of a friend of mine lost her iPhone.  She had the 5GB plan and iCloud backup turned on. But because the storage was long tapped out, her most recent backup was a year or so old, plus she lost countless photos.  

 

 

 

I pay for the 2TB we all use.