Hi guys,

I've recently encountered a 3 days worth of data loss in my primary mobile which was iPhone11 due to an accident, after which I have upgraded it to iPhone 14 earlier this week.

The data loss incident has affected us despite subscribing to iCloud 2TB for myself and my wife for years. I suspect that during travelling, sometimes I did not connect to the hotel wifi and just utilized my 4g data. As far as I know, the criteria of iOS for the automated iCloud backup is to ensure the phone is on charging mode, connected to wifi and screen switched off. Basically what you normally does before you sleep but I have not fulfilled all the criteria hence the gap on the backup.

This incident has left me shaken and stress losing some of the very important memory and data especially from whatsapp which I am still trying to recover some of it via a recovery software tool online.

I have been thinking to re-strategize my backup strategy but I am unsure what I am planning to do is workable hence I am seeking for the seniors experience and kind advice so that I don't encounter such a stressful incident again.

I have two iPhones today,

1. iPhone 14 Pro Max 1TB capacity (Primary phone) - all the photos are on "original mode" as there are plenty of capacity with the new phone
2. iPhone 11 Pro Max 256GB capacity (Secondary phone) - all the photos are on "optimize mode" as there phone cannot contain all the pictures due to max capacity

Can I backup both of these phones to iCloud simultaneously? Will the backup supersede one another? As in iPhone 11 will supersede iPhone 14 backup and vice versa? I don't want to encounter a situation whereby if I were to restore my iPhone 14 and it restores the iPhone 11 backup for me which is going to be disastrous.

Also, what is the best way to backup whatsapp together with iCloud? I normally turn on daily backup for whatsapp but how does the whatsapp backup correlates with the iCloud? Do i need to backup iCloud manually then backup the whatsapp manually?

Any other tips for a better and efficient backup plans with two iPhones?


My backup image as below,
JT's iPhone is iPhone14
JT's iPhone (2) is iPhone11

You can backup both phone to iCloud, they’ll show up as separate devices in iCloud

IMO, Using the built in WhatsApp backup is a last resort to retrieve my data for me because it causes data loss(for the media)



The iCloud backup built into the iPhone doesn’t have that issue but you must restore the entire device

If you have enough data, you can enable “backup over mobile data” in the settings

This post has been edited by yongtjunkit: Dec 24 2022, 09:01 AM

For large storage backup & transfers, i strongly recommend using computer. Locally backup files.
Mac or Windows (iTunes)

Thanks bro. Whats the diff between backing up on itunes vs icloud?

no matter how many iphones you have, there are possibliity to lost all your phones.

If your data is very important, allow use mobile data upload photos or data to icloud, let it auto upload.

after seeing this post, i quickly check my phone and turn on backup over mobile data.

on computer, it will do full backup. faster & more reliable imo.