iPhone 8/Plus Help with a lost backup and setting up new device - a lot of music

[fullauto]

Hi all. Need some advice on upgrading iPhone 6S+ 128gb (full) to iPhone 8+.

Original iPhone 6S+ backup lost over 12 months ago. It’s my partners phone, he has tons of self-mixed mp3 files on the device (work).

He purchased iCloud storage for backup (ran out of space on iPhone - currently 47gb of 50gb used) but hasn’t run a backup for over 40 weeks. Trying to backup via phone for over 18 hours, times are changing from 6 minutes to 6 hours to 10 hours. It has stopped twice (phone is on charge with display off set to never) and I have had to restart the backup each time.

The most important data is music which is a mixture of old synched mp3s (created in Adobe Audition) and iTunes purchases. The library is reasonably complex and well organized in playlists.

I have set up his new 8+ (Hold devices together etc.) but don’t know where to go from here.. I’m on ‘Set up as new device - restore iCloud backup (no music) or iTunes restore.

AppleCare advises I can backup the device to my computer/iTunes and it will copy all his music (is this true?) - then restore to the new 8+ and everything will copy over exact. The phone has never been backed up to my machine and I don’t have his music on my machine.

How do I move forward in this situation to get all of his data (and music) copied over to the 8+?

Thanks for you help!

 

[Puonti]

Backing up to your computer and then restoring the backup to the 8 Plus sounds to me like the way to go. Just don’t reset / clear out the 6S Plus until you are absolutely sure everything’s transferred over perfectly.

If there’s Health data on the 6S Plus, remember to password-protect the iTunes backup so that the data is transferred over to the new phone. iTunes backups without password do not store Health data.

Also, I’d then get the 200 GB iCloud plan and let the new phone do a full iCloud backup over WiFi while connected to power just to make sure that backup is there if anything was to go wrong later. iCloud backups do store Health data.

 

[HDFan]

The phone has never been backed up to my machine and I don’t have his music on my machine.

Backing your 6S+ up to your machine shouldn't be a problem, assuming you have the appropriate passwords.

As Puonti said, remember to password-protect the iTunes backup

I'm assuming you have iTunes on a computer. If so in the iTunes (Mac) summary for your device you should see "Encrypt iPhone Backup". Make sure this is checked, otherwise you can lose data, such as the health data mentioned above.

Ideally you'd want to see several backups in iTunes, a couple in iCloud and a couple in "This Computer". If you click on "Restore backup" you should see a list of available backups to confirm that they have been made.

Assuming that the 8+ is "new" and can be wiped, the safest thing to do is to set it up as a new phone, and restore it from one of these backups. After the setup and restore of the 8+ is complete, verify that everything you need is there. As Puonti says Then, and to be really really safe only then, you can wipe the 6S+.

 

[Shirasaki]

If all of your music is stored in a separate app, a backup might work. But if they are stored in stock music app, then you need to use iExplorer to save them directly from old device (this function is a paid function), or save the entire iTunes library folder to a computer. Just FYI.