I had an iCloud backup of my iPad Pro which was taking up 4.2 GB of space according to the iCloud storage. That seemed a bit large since the iPad Pro was restored from a backup of a different iPad that was 3.5 GB, but whatever.
Today I ended up doing a backup, restore and restore from backup with iTunes on a Windows PC. Since I wanted to start a fresh iCloud backup, I deleted the existing one. About an hour later I kicked off a backup on the iPad. It finished in about 15 minutes and claimed the backup was 3.7 GB (despite originally estimating 4.2 GB). My Internet upload speeds are 10 Mbps, so there’s no possible way 3.7 GB could have been uploaded in 15 minutes. It would take at least 50 minutes to upload 3.7 GB. At most the backup could have uploaded 1 GB.
I’ve seen this in the past, where backups occur much too quickly to be the size icloud says they are. That leads me to ask, how is the backup larger than the data uploaded? I can only think of two possible explanations:
1. The backup data isn’t actually deleted when you delete it and iCloud just reused the existing backup data. This goes against what Apple claims.
2. iCloud can use data from the backup of one device in another. The backup of my iPad Air 2 likely has some of the same data as my new iPad Pro since that backup was restored. That doesn’t seem right either though.
3. The reported size is wrong and improperly “stealing” storage.
Does anyone know how iCloud backups work enough to explain this?
Today I ended up doing a backup, restore and restore from backup with iTunes on a Windows PC. Since I wanted to start a fresh iCloud backup, I deleted the existing one. About an hour later I kicked off a backup on the iPad. It finished in about 15 minutes and claimed the backup was 3.7 GB (despite originally estimating 4.2 GB). My Internet upload speeds are 10 Mbps, so there’s no possible way 3.7 GB could have been uploaded in 15 minutes. It would take at least 50 minutes to upload 3.7 GB. At most the backup could have uploaded 1 GB.
I’ve seen this in the past, where backups occur much too quickly to be the size icloud says they are. That leads me to ask, how is the backup larger than the data uploaded? I can only think of two possible explanations:
1. The backup data isn’t actually deleted when you delete it and iCloud just reused the existing backup data. This goes against what Apple claims.
2. iCloud can use data from the backup of one device in another. The backup of my iPad Air 2 likely has some of the same data as my new iPad Pro since that backup was restored. That doesn’t seem right either though.
3. The reported size is wrong and improperly “stealing” storage.
Does anyone know how iCloud backups work enough to explain this?
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Weird I kept it withing 5 gb for 7 years, and now it's more difficult.
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