Where to back up to?
Q Should I back up my iPhone to iCloud or my Mac? by MARY BRIDGER
It’s really important that A you choose one or the other, although which comes down to personal preference and convenience. The most immediate difference between them is that backups made to iCloud use up some of your paid-for storage allowance. If you’re already using most of that and would need to increase your subscription, that’s a significant step. Although you don’t pay monthly for storage on your Mac, you still need free space there.
Both types of backup exclude most of the data already stored in iCloud, such as Contacts, Calendars, Notes, iMessages and text (SMS and MMS) messages. Neither do they include data from Apple Mail, or content purchased through the
App Store, Music or Books. iCloud backups don’t include Activity or Health data, although they’re always encrypted; if you encrypt your backup to a Mac, that will include both.
Accessibility is another concern. So long as you can hook up your iPhone to a decent Wi-Fi connection, you can back it up and restore it anywhere. If your backups are on your Mac and that’s sick or unavailable, then you have no backups. On the other hand, you control how long you keep your backups on your Mac, which you can archive to more permanent local storage.
Many users have been caught out by the fact that iCloud backups are only kept for 180 days after you stop or disable iCloud Backup, and there’s no option to retain them any longer than that even when you have space.