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0928001

Suspended
Original poster
Sep 15, 2012
453
385
I've had an application on my phone for months, which was constantly backing up to iCloud. I deleted it the other night and didn't install it again until the next day.

During the overnight backup, it recorded that the application wasn't installed, so now, when I do a full restore, it won't re-download the app. Now I have the app with nothing in it (downloaded fresh from the app store), and seemingly no way to import the iCloud data into it. The data is hanging out in my iCloud backup and I am afraid if it does another backup of the "clean" app, it will get erased and record the current app data, which has nothing.

My question is, does anyone know, if I back up the phone again, it will delete the 500MB of data I have saved in iCloud, and replace it with what is essentially nothing?
 

QzzB

macrumors regular
Mar 7, 2015
128
55
London
I believe the way that the iCloud Backup (might be wrong, but its how I Understand it) is that a backup is done every night when plugged in or when it is manually triggered. The backup is a snapshot of the phone at that time. It isn't designed to keep old data from apps (if apps support it and use CloudKit they can store data in iCloud separately to a App Backup though the iCloud Backup).

iCloud Backup is only designed to be used to restore your phone to the last backup date, and mostly used when needing to do a factory reset ora new phone.

In my personal experience I have had some problems with the restore of app data from a iCloud Phone Restore. Even though the data appears as part of the backup, I have had some apps that are brand new when restoring from the backup - I think this might be how the app is written more than the backup procedure, iOS is just copying whats there and I think that the app can't work out its meant to use the data when restored.

Thats my understanding, might be wrong but thats also how I treat the iCloud Backup. If you want a full backup, iTunes is much more reliable, and you can keep it for as long as you want (enable Encrypted Backup if you want to keep Passwords for WiFi and accounts).
 

0928001

Suspended
Original poster
Sep 15, 2012
453
385
Thanks for your reply, I pulled the trigger and it erased all of my data I've been storing for months, as expected. Highly disappointed but a lesson learned, I suppose.

IMO the developer of the app needs to add a way to recover iCloud files from within the app.
 
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