iCloud backup. How long???
October 18, 2021 6:14 AM Subscribe
How long should your initial iCloud backup take? Surely not an entire day, right? Right?
Over the weekend, my wife finally got around to setting-up her iPhone to do iCloud backups. This included purchasing more iCloud storage (200GB). She started her initial backup yesterday afternoon. An hour later, the phone was showing the backup was going to take nine hours. Whaaaaa??? She cancelled the backup and decided to try later.
Last night, she started the backup again, and just left it running overnight while she slept. This morning, the phone was indicating the backup was going to take one day. Whaaaaaaa?!?!? Obviously, she cancelled the backup.
What might be going on here? What is hampering the backup?
FWIW, her phone is a 6s (iOS 14.8), and roughly 100 of her 128GB of storage is full.
Over the weekend, my wife finally got around to setting-up her iPhone to do iCloud backups. This included purchasing more iCloud storage (200GB). She started her initial backup yesterday afternoon. An hour later, the phone was showing the backup was going to take nine hours. Whaaaaa??? She cancelled the backup and decided to try later.
Last night, she started the backup again, and just left it running overnight while she slept. This morning, the phone was indicating the backup was going to take one day. Whaaaaaaa?!?!? Obviously, she cancelled the backup.
What might be going on here? What is hampering the backup?
FWIW, her phone is a 6s (iOS 14.8), and roughly 100 of her 128GB of storage is full.
Anecdotally, yes, the first ever backup can take an alarmingly long time. Especially if photos are included rather than being independently uploaded to iCloud. Subsequent backups should be much better though - it's been years since I've noticed backups being slow.
I don't know if iOS 14 offers backup over mobile data, but if so (it'll be under Settings > Apple ID > iCloud > iCloud Backup), I'd turn that off, just in case. (I discovered yesterday that it had been defaulted to on for my 12 mini on iOS 15, and a single backup would potentially use my entire month's data allowance as well as taking an eternity over my one bar of 3G, so yikes.)
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 6:40 AM on October 18, 2021
I don't know if iOS 14 offers backup over mobile data, but if so (it'll be under Settings > Apple ID > iCloud > iCloud Backup), I'd turn that off, just in case. (I discovered yesterday that it had been defaulted to on for my 12 mini on iOS 15, and a single backup would potentially use my entire month's data allowance as well as taking an eternity over my one bar of 3G, so yikes.)
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 6:40 AM on October 18, 2021
Check your mobile plan and see if they throttle you down to 3G or a slower speed if you exceed a monthly data cap.
posted by JoeZydeco at 6:49 AM on October 18, 2021
posted by JoeZydeco at 6:49 AM on October 18, 2021
Backing up to iCloud is designed to be a background process that you don't notice and don't pay much attention. It prioritizes backing up when the phone is plugged in and connected to wifi. It may pause when you are not connected to wifi or plugged in. It is not optimized for speed. It's not designed to be run by hand, where you turn it on, watch it until it finishes, and then turn it off. So yes, it could take a day or even several days to do the initial backup. It will go faster if you don't keep canceling it.
posted by Winnie the Proust at 7:37 AM on October 18, 2021
posted by Winnie the Proust at 7:37 AM on October 18, 2021
Seconding deezil. Because most home users download far more than they upload, most home internet plans are asymmetric, with most of the bandwidth allocated for downloading and only a small portion allocated for uploading. Most of the time you never notice, until you try running a large cloud backup, uploading a long video, or other data intensive tasks. Comcast/Xfinity has plans as unbalanced as 200Mbps down/5Mbps up; other ISPs may vary, but the general trend stands.
Assuming 10Mbps upload speeds, 100GB/10Mbps = 22.2 hours. That's assuming that your wife's phone has access to that bandwidth full time, and doesn't need to share with any other device in the house. But even everyday traffic requires some uploading, to initiate the download requests, acknowledge successful transmission of each packet, send logins/cookies, etc., so when the upload bandwidth is saturated, the entire connection can become sluggish even if there's plenty of downstream bandwidth. I'd bet that the iPhone has some logic to limit the upload speeds to less than your entire upload bandwidth, and back off when the connection starts getting congested, so real world numbers will necessarily be longer than the theoretical best case. This is somewhat offset by not needing to back up system files, etc., so you're not uploading a full 100GB, but yes, multiple days to upload that much data from a home connection would not be unexpected.
posted by yuwtze at 7:41 AM on October 18, 2021
Assuming 10Mbps upload speeds, 100GB/10Mbps = 22.2 hours. That's assuming that your wife's phone has access to that bandwidth full time, and doesn't need to share with any other device in the house. But even everyday traffic requires some uploading, to initiate the download requests, acknowledge successful transmission of each packet, send logins/cookies, etc., so when the upload bandwidth is saturated, the entire connection can become sluggish even if there's plenty of downstream bandwidth. I'd bet that the iPhone has some logic to limit the upload speeds to less than your entire upload bandwidth, and back off when the connection starts getting congested, so real world numbers will necessarily be longer than the theoretical best case. This is somewhat offset by not needing to back up system files, etc., so you're not uploading a full 100GB, but yes, multiple days to upload that much data from a home connection would not be unexpected.
posted by yuwtze at 7:41 AM on October 18, 2021
Yeah, the first one took ages for me with all my pics and such, but all subsequent ones took only a minute or so. It also runs completely in the background and will self-pause as needed so there's no reason to keep cancelling it.
posted by anderjen at 7:54 AM on October 18, 2021
posted by anderjen at 7:54 AM on October 18, 2021
Response by poster: Thanks all. This really seems like something that the powers-that-be should warn users about. I guess that might dissuade people from actually using iCloud Backup, though.
A quick followup...Would I be correct in assuming that, if my wife starts the backup in one wifi network, then leaves the network for awhile (and, thus, the backup cannot continue), it will pick-up again once she is back on wifi? She doesn’t use cellular for data.
posted by Thorzdad at 1:09 PM on October 18, 2021
A quick followup...Would I be correct in assuming that, if my wife starts the backup in one wifi network, then leaves the network for awhile (and, thus, the backup cannot continue), it will pick-up again once she is back on wifi? She doesn’t use cellular for data.
posted by Thorzdad at 1:09 PM on October 18, 2021
Yes, it should pick back up when back in wifi coverage.
posted by deezil at 6:12 PM on October 18, 2021
posted by deezil at 6:12 PM on October 18, 2021
Seconding Deezil and others about the length of time for the initial backup - but to be fair to Apple and other cloud backup services, they assume that you set it up when you first get _any_ phone, it uploads a few things, and then every backup after that it only backs up what's new or changed. Also known in some circles as 'incremental backup'. So, if she'd started backing up with iCloud as soon as she had an iPhone (that had support for iCloud of course), it would never have seemed to take "forever".
posted by TimHare at 9:33 PM on October 18, 2021
posted by TimHare at 9:33 PM on October 18, 2021
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posted by deezil at 6:32 AM on October 18, 2021 [2 favorites]