Lost all my flashcards when iCloud drive switched off

[Will Newcomb]

Like so many others I've been suffering terrible battery drain on my iPhone5s following recent 'updates' to iOS.

Just now I tried a 'fix' by switching off iCloud drive. A little later I went to Pleco and discovered all my flashcards and folders had disappeared. Assuming that if I turned iCloud drive back on, it would resync from iCloud again. But it did nothing. I then discovered that Flashcard sync to iCloud was turned off (I had previously had it turned on). Turning it on did not restore anything.

I've had to go back to a 2 month old backup.

Is there something I should have done before turning iCloud drive off, as well as making a back up before?

Thanks

 

[mikelove]

The flashcards should have been restored by turning sync back on - was there a prompt asking you if you wanted to use the flashcard database in iCloud or on your device?

If that prompt did appear and you picked the device version, check File Manager - Pleco would automatically back up the iCloud version in that case, and you could easily restore from that one.

If not, the iCloud Drive cards might not have synced back from our server yet - have you used Pleco again since this happened? If you do, there should hopefully be a database version conflict prompt on startup giving you the option to pick the older database from before you switched off iCloud Drive.

If neither of those is an option then it sounds like all of the files on iCloud Drive were somehow deleted when you switched it off - is there any chance you might have also switched to a different iCloud account at the same time you were doing that? Are you perhaps located in China now but were not located in China when you last logged into iCloud?

 

[Will Newcomb]

Thanks Mike

I received no prompt from iCloud. I know that iCloud had been working before because it synced my flashcards between my iPhone5s and iPad4.

My other iCloud files (Numbers and contacts) are all present still.

All very curious! I've checked File Manager and there don't seem to be any backups between 1st Feb and today!

Ho Hum. I've gone back to my 1st Feb b/u and have lost 6 weeks of new flashcards. Last year I used to b/u manually every day but I got used to the iCloud sync so forgot to do it regularly this year. Now I'll make a daily copy to DropBox.

 

[mikelove]

Sorry about that. I don't know if even anybody at Apple understands all of the mysteries of iCloud Drive, but definitely an argument for more independent backups, yes.

 

[pprendeville]

Just had the same problem. Was messing with iCloud trying to setup contact groups for an iPhone 4 and think I switched it off by accident. Then went into Pleco Flashcards and got the message in the first pic. Rebooted iPad, then turned on iCloud Drive and Pleco is enabled also but still no sign of the flashcards. Looked in the backup flashcards and the last backup is from Oct 2014. Is this an Apple issue? I guess it's worth doing a manual backup every now and again.

 

[mikelove]

Did you try turning on iCloud sync again? It might have gotten turned off - turning it back on again should bring back whatever the last version on iCloud Drive was, at least after a reboot.