MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - iPad What data survives a restore from old to new device

49Kat · 10-26-2016, 10:48 AM

Well, my iPad 2 is old, and I was fortunate enough to be able to get an iPad Mini 4 with points. I wanted to transfer my data to my new iPad, and hopefully not have to redownload entire book libraries. (Yes, I realize some on this board do not have their entire libraries on their devices. I like to have it all there. I travel, I do not always have internet available, and I like to have my library at my disposal at such times.) My new mini has 128 Gb, so lots of room for my stuff. My iPad 2 did have all my ebooks on it.

So I backed up the iPad 2 to my Windows PC, having it encrypted so that everything would get backed up. Now Apple claims that all the data on your device is on this backup.

Nope.

First of all, the apps had to all be downloaded again.

I was pleased that the contents of an app I used for journaling did survive intact. To me, that and the pictures meant the most, and all the pictures and albums made it. Yes, I do have the pictures backed up to my PC, but I like having the albums organized the way I do on the Apple device.

The contents of my Bluefire library did not make it. Nor my old Sony Reader app. Most of that was duplicated to my Kobo account, but there were a few books that were not. I have a Sony reader, and the items might be there. I would guess, though, that these were not paid for items, and if I haven't noticed them in the past few years, I likely don't need them.

The Kobo library had to be downloaded in its entirety, which is super annoying on a satellite internet connection. The 'download all' option did not go smoothly. I have a generous data plan on my iphone, and I ended up using the hotspot. I have 3 days left in my billing cycle and at nearly 6 Gb in, I'm not quite half way into the plan limit.

The Kindle library appeared to be OK. The checkmarks were in the books, but I didn't scroll all the way down in the 'device' part. It turns out that a good chunk of my library did not make the transfer. Those that did had to be manually individually removed from the device and downloaded again. What a nuisance. Each book has to be dealt with on an individual basis. I guess on the positive side--I did have some books there that were freebies and whose subject matter no longer holds my interest, so this may be a good way to do some housecleaning in my Kindle library.

And I have some .mobi ebooks there that I got free from a non-Kindle source, and those books did survive the transition. (I have backups of those files on my Windows PC, I could just use dropbox to put them back in the Kindle app if I needed to.)

All iBooks and music had to be downloaded again, but Apple does say the backups do not back up that data. I took spouse's hotspot bandwidth for the music, he had used less than 100 Mb of his plan.

I have less than 50 songs in my purchased library, so not bad. Re the iBooks, remember when Apple had all those freebies a while back? I would like to get them back, at least. I don't have a lot of purchased content there, I can do better price wise with other vendors most of the time.

So, this was my experience changing devices, if it helps anyone to know what data gets backed up and what doesn't. I'm not sure why the data from my ebook apps didn't get backed up. Maybe it's a copyright protection thing.

10-26-2016, 10:48 AM	#1
49Kat Fanatic Posts: 580 Karma: 1309104 Join Date: Oct 2011 Location: BC,Canada/NV, USA Device: iPad 9th Gen, iPhone 11, Paperwhite 10th Gen.	What data survives a restore from old to new device Well, my iPad 2 is old, and I was fortunate enough to be able to get an iPad Mini 4 with points. I wanted to transfer my data to my new iPad, and hopefully not have to redownload entire book libraries. (Yes, I realize some on this board do not have their entire libraries on their devices. I like to have it all there. I travel, I do not always have internet available, and I like to have my library at my disposal at such times.) My new mini has 128 Gb, so lots of room for my stuff. My iPad 2 did have all my ebooks on it. So I backed up the iPad 2 to my Windows PC, having it encrypted so that everything would get backed up. Now Apple claims that all the data on your device is on this backup. Nope. First of all, the apps had to all be downloaded again. I was pleased that the contents of an app I used for journaling did survive intact. To me, that and the pictures meant the most, and all the pictures and albums made it. Yes, I do have the pictures backed up to my PC, but I like having the albums organized the way I do on the Apple device. The contents of my Bluefire library did not make it. Nor my old Sony Reader app. Most of that was duplicated to my Kobo account, but there were a few books that were not. I have a Sony reader, and the items might be there. I would guess, though, that these were not paid for items, and if I haven't noticed them in the past few years, I likely don't need them. The Kobo library had to be downloaded in its entirety, which is super annoying on a satellite internet connection. The 'download all' option did not go smoothly. I have a generous data plan on my iphone, and I ended up using the hotspot. I have 3 days left in my billing cycle and at nearly 6 Gb in, I'm not quite half way into the plan limit. The Kindle library appeared to be OK. The checkmarks were in the books, but I didn't scroll all the way down in the 'device' part. It turns out that a good chunk of my library did not make the transfer. Those that did had to be manually individually removed from the device and downloaded again. What a nuisance. Each book has to be dealt with on an individual basis. I guess on the positive side--I did have some books there that were freebies and whose subject matter no longer holds my interest, so this may be a good way to do some housecleaning in my Kindle library. And I have some .mobi ebooks there that I got free from a non-Kindle source, and those books did survive the transition. (I have backups of those files on my Windows PC, I could just use dropbox to put them back in the Kindle app if I needed to.) All iBooks and music had to be downloaded again, but Apple does say the backups do not back up that data. I took spouse's hotspot bandwidth for the music, he had used less than 100 Mb of his plan. I have less than 50 songs in my purchased library, so not bad. Re the iBooks, remember when Apple had all those freebies a while back? I would like to get them back, at least. I don't have a lot of purchased content there, I can do better price wise with other vendors most of the time. So, this was my experience changing devices, if it helps anyone to know what data gets backed up and what doesn't. I'm not sure why the data from my ebook apps didn't get backed up. Maybe it's a copyright protection thing.