# ICloud backup OR wifi-sync, but not both ... Very lame.



## Guest (Oct 13, 2011)

Just as the subject says. It seems you can do one or the other but not both. Who's lame idea was that? Everyone knows that a single backup is all you are supposed to do, right? Doesn't sound very well thought out to me. Since I a manage my music on my iOS devices manually I guess that means that there's going to be no iCloud backup in my future, at least for now.


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## iRob (Oct 13, 2011)

these are completely separate features. you can definitely do both.


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## monokitty (Jan 26, 2002)

iRob said:


> these are completely separate features. you can definitely do both.


This.

With iCloud sync, your Mail, Contacts, iCal, etc., is backed up to the Cloud. But you can still plug the device into your computer (or use Wi-Fi Sync) to manage the content on the device through iTunes on your computer.

The difference, AFAIK, is that if you ever needed to restore your device, it would be restored with the settings stored in iCloud if you're backing up the device to iCloud, instead of the settings on iTunes on your computer like we all did prior to iTunes 10.5 and iOS 5 if we needed to restore.


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## John Clay (Jun 25, 2006)

The option is backing up in iCloud, or backing up on the computer - not backing up in iCloud or syncing with WiFi.


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## Guest (Oct 14, 2011)

Ah ok so it's just the backup, but still ... Having more backups would be better, no?


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## iRob (Oct 13, 2011)

mguertin said:


> Ah ok so it's just the backup, but still ... Having more backups would be better, no?


I imagine iCloud has multiple copies of backups in case of drive failure on their end. If you are really worried you turn off iCloud, backup to iTunes, then turn iCloud backup back on!


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## monokitty (Jan 26, 2002)

mguertin said:


> Ah ok so it's just the backup, but still ... Having more backups would be better, no?


iCloud will be a more reliable backup than your computer.


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## Guest (Oct 14, 2011)

Lars said:


> iCloud will be a more reliable backup than your computer.


Really? Please define "more reliable" ... to me reliable also includes the ability to retrieve the data on demand. It's still a "failed" backup if I can't retrieve it when I need it as far as I'm concerned. I wouldn't rely on "the cloud" as a sole backup for _anything_ to be honest.


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## fjnmusic (Oct 29, 2006)

mguertin said:


> Really? Please define "more reliable" ... to me reliable also includes the ability to retrieve the data on demand. It's still a "failed" backup if I can't retrieve it when I need it as far as I'm concerned. I wouldn't rely on "the cloud" as a sole backup for _anything_ to be honest.


More reliable than say……Blackberry servers. :-(


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## monokitty (Jan 26, 2002)

mguertin said:


> Really? Please define "more reliable" ... to me reliable also includes the ability to retrieve the data on demand. It's still a "failed" backup if I can't retrieve it when I need it as far as I'm concerned. I wouldn't rely on "the cloud" as a sole backup for _anything_ to be honest.


You can restore an iCloud backup directly from and to your device, no computer necessary. That's one of the benefits of an iCloud iOS device backup solution. The iCloud server is more reliable than your home computer, which is more likely to fail and wipe out your locally store iOS device backup than the iCloud server is. If your concern is an inability to trust iCloud with your data, then by all means, trust your computer instead. I'm just laying it out for you. Personally, I have my iPhone set to backup its content to iCloud, which it does nightly automatically for me.


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## Paul82 (Sep 19, 2007)

I can see the desire to be able to backup to both (though I admit it is probably overkill)... I think the issue that prevents this might have something to do with keeping the backups in sync... that said personally I would prefer an option where the iCloud copy is the "master" copy, but you have a local copy on your machine. Similar to how all the other iCloud services work, the cloud is the master copy, and it pushes copies down to all connected devices... my only real concern about the cloud only backup route is that when it comes time to restore it could potentially take substantially longer as you could be looking at a several GB download before restoring.... (back on beta 1-4 ish I was backing up to the cloud until I ran out of space in the allocated 5GB free...


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## csonni (Feb 8, 2001)

I wonder if there's a way to see exactly what is being stored on iCloud.
I had purchased an album last night on my MacBook and only 3 songs synced over to my devices. Incomplete sync? It also seems to be slow as mud, although that could be my network.

Update: I just did a manual sync through iTunes and now have have those 3 duplicated in my album. Ugh.


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## Guest (Oct 14, 2011)

Lars said:


> You can restore an iCloud backup directly from and to your device, no computer necessary. That's one of the benefits of an iCloud iOS device backup solution. The iCloud server is more reliable than your home computer, which is more likely to fail and wipe out your locally store iOS device backup than the iCloud server is. If your concern is an inability to trust iCloud with your data, then by all means, trust your computer instead. I'm just laying it out for you. Personally, I have my iPhone set to backup its content to iCloud, which it does nightly automatically for me.


You completely missed my point though ... yes you can restore directly from the iCloud servers to your device, provided you have a stable and fast internet connection at the time you need to do it and for the amount of time it will require to run. That's not always the case and it's at those times that iCloud only backup would be pretty disastrous. If you're sync'ed and backed up to your portable computer at least you have immediate access to the backups which will also be much faster than restoring from iCloud.

As for iCloud being more reliable means of storage than my computer (and then in turn all my backups) we'll have to wait and see on that one. iCloud has been public for days now and you're already declaring it stable. I don't have that kind of blind faith in anything.


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## MacUnited (Nov 1, 2009)

Not sure if it's related to reliability or the iCloud, but I was testing the iCloud with a couple of pages documents that just simply disappeared!! can't find them anywhere!! not sure what happened.. so for now, I'm doing the backups in my MBP till the reliability is proven..


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## Rounder (Aug 9, 2008)

Actually you can sync with iCloud and still sync with iTunes. I just did it. The difference is that if iCloud is set as your backup method you have to manually Sync with iTunes. When you plug it in it won't automatically Sync. You can also initiate a manual backup via wifi sync. So all in all, it's great, have a backup in the cloud and also one on your computer


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## slipstream (May 9, 2011)

What are the differences between iCloud backup and iTunes/iMac backup? Will both back up all my stuff on the iDevice?


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## Tech Elementz (Mar 15, 2011)

slipstream said:


> What are the differences between iCloud backup and iTunes/iMac backup? Will both back up all my stuff on the iDevice?


Yes.


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## slipstream (May 9, 2011)

I just found this at http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4859:
The following items are not backed up to iCloud. You can sync these items with a computer using iTunes:
Music and TV shows not purchased from the iTunes Store
Movies, podcasts, and audio books
Photos that were originally synced from your computer


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