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Pepperfection

macrumors regular
Original poster
Nov 13, 2017
162
84
Hello guys. Anyone knows what the backup size of a 512GB iPhone? Of course my phone isnt full yet, but just wanna know.

I am going to buy a 512GB iPhone 14 Pro Max soon. But my current MacBook Air M1 is also 512GB.

I know backup datas are smaller than the actual size but by how much, I dont know. So anyone knows?

Many thanks!
 

throAU

macrumors G3
Feb 13, 2012
9,137
7,294
Perth, Western Australia
It will be reasonably close to the size of the data on it as pretty much everything is already compressed while on device.

So yeah, trying to back up a phone to a Mac with similar capacity isn’t going to work well if it’s full.

If you haven’t considered it I highly recommend iCloud backup.

I had an accidental device wipe due to a password policy that was only 4 attempts (had recently changed device pin due to policy) during a morning meeting and was back up from iCloud (to the point I could work with stuff still syncing in the background) within 30 minutes.

If you’re doing a restore from a Mac, you’re boned if the Mac isnt with you and the full restore will take much much longer.

If you use iCloud to sync to all your devices, a device problem is much less hassle and traditional backups only really needed if you lock yourself out of iCloud or have the account compromised.
 
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Pepperfection

macrumors regular
Original poster
Nov 13, 2017
162
84
Thank you sir! Never used Apple Cloud. So if I have 512GB, most likely I need to subscribe the 512GB cloud size? I wanna backup all my photos which is important(since 2008 lol).
 

onenorth

macrumors 6502a
Sep 15, 2021
608
800
Thank you sir! Never used Apple Cloud. So if I have 512GB, most likely I need to subscribe the 512GB cloud size? I wanna backup all my photos which is important(since 2008 lol).
I believe Apple will temporarily give you as much cloud storage as needed to do the transfer at no extra charge.
 

throAU

macrumors G3
Feb 13, 2012
9,137
7,294
Perth, Western Australia
I believe Apple will temporarily give you as much cloud storage as needed to do the transfer at no extra charge.
Backups are far better if you just turn them on and leave them on constantly.

In my case the most recent backup was from a few hours ago (overnight) and the stuff not included was iCloud synced anyway.

Relying on yourself to back up is far less reliable. In my opinion iCloud storage is worth it for this if you care about your data.
 

NoBoMac

Moderator
Staff member
Jul 1, 2014
6,244
4,931
You can always put the backups onto an external drive. Replace ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/ with a link to an external drive. Programs like iMazing have ability built-in to specify where backups go (in case of iMazing, can also do delta backups vs fulls).

Also, basically, anything that is iCloud, iTunes & App Stores does not get backed up. Anything synced from a computer does not backup. And app data might not get backed up as well (developer of app decides that; example: Dropbox files do not backup). What gets backed up:


So pretty much impossible to know how much space YOUR phone backup size might be.
 
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