Backing Photos to Restore iPhone

[Totemsflare]

Hi guys,

A few weeks ago, a friend’s iPhone 7 128 gigs microphone stopped working. The microphone icon appears greyd out during calls. We realised that by doing a full restore to factory settings losing all data fixes the issue. However, he has 40 gigs of photo and never backed them up using iCloud. He doesn’t use iCloud as a backup. We saved a backup of his phone on his windows laptop before restoring to factory settings and restored it back but the microphone still doesn’t work. What’s the best way to save his photos before the clean reinstall? We subscribed to iCloud with the free trial for a month but the photos don’t upload. They just stay at 1%. We tried all settings, and yes iCloud Photo Library is activated. How can we backup the photos, erase all data and then put the photos back into the phone?

Thanks everyone

 

[dangeng]

Should actually work that way.
How long has it been since you started uploading to iCloud?
Make sure the phone is on WiFi.
Also plugged in to the charger might help to upload the photos.

Another method might be to disable iCloud again and download the
photos through iTunes. I think that should work too.

 

[Totemsflare]

Thanks, man. It’s uploading. I guess the upload speed is just bad and it takes its time.

 

[dangeng]

Thanks, man. It’s uploading. I guess the upload speed is just bad and it takes its time.

Sounds good.

Make sure to log into your account on iCloud.com after the upload has completely finished and before deleting the phone. Check a few pictures esp. the important ones and see if you can download a few full resolution pics.

Alternatively make sure that you still have the backup of the phone on the windows computer. And keep it as long as possible, at least until the photos are back on the phone again.

Important:
After resetting the phone and logging in to iCloud again you have to go in Settings and Photos on the phone and make sure "Download and keep originals" is checked. Otherwise the phone is only downloading low res pictures back from iCloud.

Cheers,
Dan

 

[Totemsflare]

Dan,

Just one final question. The photo upload is at 25% but there’s an enormous backup file showing on iCloud taking around 37 gigs. I’m afraid the photos won’t be able to be uploaded entirely since we have 50 gigs as maximum capacity. It doesn’t make any sense to have such a big backup. My phone’s Backups file is 3 gigs. Will it somehow convert into the big chunk of photo files?

Cheers

 

[mikzn]

depends on how many pictures - I have over 8000 pictures on my most current Photos library and have several older libraries with a lot more ( ie iPhoto 12K in pictures 38 Gig - hiking pictures)

so if you think there are 12k or more in pictures there could easily be that amount - especially if there are videos and hi res pics included.

I don't store my pictures on the phone or iCloud but if you have upgraded the storage to 50 gigs there could certainly be that size of a Photos library.

you can also log into www.icloud.com and check the amount of pictures and storage.

 

[dangeng]

Dan,

Just one final question. The photo upload is at 25% but there’s an enormous backup file showing on iCloud taking around 37 gigs. I’m afraid the photos won’t be able to be uploaded entirely since we have 50 gigs as maximum capacity. It doesn’t make any sense to have such a big backup. My phone’s Backups file is 3 gigs. Will it somehow convert into the big chunk of photo files?

Cheers

Maybe it's backing up the whole phone to iCloud?

Another thing could be that the 37 gigabyte it is showing is pre-calculated or so.

I would just wait and see how it goes.

Also iCloud or rather Apple might as well let you upload even more than 50GB for a while, I actually don't think it will just stop at 50GB.

But as I said before just let it upload the pictures and see what happens.