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neocitron

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 4, 2003
23
0
Canada
"There was a problem completing the backup. Please try again later."

Anyone else getting this?

I've tried the basic enabling/disable it in iTunes, enabling/disabling it in iOS5
 
Same here

I go to turn on iCloud Backup thru settings and get the error message " There was a problem enabling iCloud Backup" When I try again the same thing happens.
 
I'm hoping it's just Apple delaying backups in some regions as to not bog down their servers with millions of backups at once...

----------

I go to turn on iCloud Backup thru settings and get the error message " There was a problem enabling iCloud Backup" When I try again the same thing happens.

Same here.
 
ditto.

Thought it was just me...but seems I'm not the only one in the same boat. Anybody have a fix or is this Apple staggering the droves of iClouders making their initial backups?
 
Thought it was just me...but seems I'm not the only one in the same boat. Anybody have a fix or is this Apple staggering the droves of iClouders making their initial backups?

If you think about the sheer volume of Backups... Let's say there's 30 million iOS5 users (who have downloaded and updated to iOS5) times an average of 10GB per backup... That's an insane amount of data to be thrown at Apple at once...

I'm hoping the reason is that they're staggering the inflow of data. I don't know of another time in history that this much data has been sent towards a company, it's usually streamed from it.
 
It works, there's no way Apple would put out a service and not have it be able to be used. That being said I haven't quite got it working :p

But just like the wifi sync, you've just gotta turn it on in iTunes first. I was getting the same error when trying to turn it on on my iPhone, now I've turned it on in iTunes and it's enabled but when I hit 'Back Up Now', it pops up with 'Backing Up' and progress bar, but then it says 'There was a problem completing the backup. Please try again later'...

Guess i'll just leave it, and try again later...
 
If you think about the sheer volume of Backups... Let's say there's 30 million iOS5 users (who have downloaded and updated to iOS5) times an average of 10GB per backup... That's an insane amount of data to be thrown at Apple at once...

I'm hoping the reason is that they're staggering the inflow of data. I don't know of another time in history that this much data has been sent towards a company, it's usually streamed from it.

The backups should be less than 10Gb for almost everyone - remember, all the apps and music are already stored on Apple's end, it's just your personal data, photos etc being backed up - but yes, even at 1 Gb each and 1m users trying to enable it so far, that's a whole petabyte of data hitting them ... enough to max out an OC-192 connection for about two weeks. Must make for some interesting traffic graphs!

The downloads will have been even greater traffic - that all gets cached and load-balanced by Akamai, so the thirty petabytes of download traffic was "only" a few terabytes downloaded from each of 10,000 servers, but even there Apple's servers managed to break quite badly for a while last night.

On top of all that, presumably they're migrating a lot of data from MobileMe over to the new iCloud systems right now, which won't help the load.

The "Lion recovery" update broke my MBP to the point of having to reinstall - which is fortunately very very simple now, but still takes about two hours of waiting and downloading - and iOS 5 failed to install the first ten times I tried, but worked first time this morning, presumably because the initial surge of requests was cleared. I imagine iCloud backup will be much the same: tonight or tomorrow, it'll start working fine.
 
Don't you guys get under iCloud\Storage & Backup it says:

Total Storage: 5.0GB
Available: 5.0GB
Manage Storage >
Buy More Storage


I'm assuming it's not just cause i'm in Australia i'm getting those limits show up.
 
Don't you guys get under iCloud\Storage & Backup it says:

Total Storage: 5.0GB
Available: 5.0GB
Manage Storage >
Buy More Storage


I'm assuming it's not just cause i'm in Australia i'm getting those limits show up.

That's universal.

5GB is not including Camera Roll, Apps, Document and Settings among other things.
 
enable in itunes device settings

i found that i could enable iCloud backups like so...

when the device is connected to iTunes, by going into the device (where the info/music/photos/podcasts tabs are etc) you get the various backup and sync options.

you can enable wifi sync in there, (doesn't seem to work on actual settings of device either) and you can also select iCloud backup rather than computer backup.

once enabled in itunes, they are enabled in the actual device settings. the actual backup still fails, BUT thats the only way i found to be able to enable the options in the first place!

lets hope, as suspected here, the backups aren't going through to manage traffic over the first couple of days.

ps, if wifi sync with iTunes is enabled, EDIT - if you want to sync to the computer for a physical backup copy of the device - you have to manually select the device and click backup as its not automatic when plugged in anymore, apparently.

the wifi backup is brilliant tho. ill still do manual backups to my computer every so often tho, especially until this iCloud backup actually works....!
 
Last edited:
I have the same problem. Gonna have to try and troubleshoot it tonight after work. So long as I have iOs 5 installed at this point is all I can be happy with. Just gonna give The Mothership some time to fix it.
 
I live in Indonesia and upgraded to iOS 5 this morning, which would have been during the wee hours in the US. The backup worked without problem on my iPad, but after updating my iPhone this evening, daytime in the US, I cannot get the backup to work.

My guess is that current traffic is horrendous, but will calm down over the next week or so.
 
i found that i could enable iCloud backups like so...

when the device is connected to iTunes, by going into the device (where the info/music/photos/podcasts tabs are etc) you get the various backup and sync options.

you can enable wifi sync in there, (doesn't seem to work on actual settings of device either) and you can also select iCloud backup rather than computer backup.

once enabled in itunes, they are enabled in the actual device settings. the actual backup still fails, BUT thats the only way i found to be able to enable the options in the first place!

lets hope, as suspected here, the backups aren't going through to manage traffic over the first couple of days.

ps, if wifi sync with iTunes is enabled, EDIT - if you want to sync to the computer for a physical backup copy of the device - you have to manually select the device and click backup as its not automatic when plugged in anymore, apparently.

the wifi backup is brilliant tho. ill still do manual backups to my computer every so often tho, especially until this iCloud backup actually works....!

This works perfectly,

thank you.
 
Same here.

I was able to turn on iCloud Backup through iTunes. However, when I go back to the Manage Storage screen on the iPhone, it shows the Backup Size as 0 bytes and under the heading Backup Options, there is nothing. So, I can't select anything to backup which is why the size is 0.

On the other hand, iCloud Photo Stream is working.

One interesting thing is that the iCloud account has my email from my apple id and under Advanced it has my brand new (as of this morning) mail account @me.com.

eMail is also working. Just not backups.
 
Simply woke up 20 mins ago and backup started to work when I flipped the switch in iOS...

Probably Apple just staggering the rollout.
 
Started this evening for me as well.

Shame on Apple for not providing a simple error message like "Backup Servers Busy. Please Try Latter."

Hubris, hubris, hubris.
:(
 
Seems to be working for me now that I've done the enablement via iTunes. Of course, now it's backing up and estimates 7 hrs to completion. Oh well :-(

My iPad iCloud backup, on the other hand, worked straight away (and took up enough space that I couldn't backup my iPhone until I purchased extra iCloud space).
 
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