I’m looking to use my complete set of GPX exports, dating back to 2016. I have iCloud Drive Backups on, as well as Automatic Monthly Exports on for both GPX and JSON. Everything looks good, EXCEPT I have a gap in data between October 2019 and July 2021.
In the Export > GPX folder, the files for these months do not exist.
In the Export > JSON folder, the files do exist but are all at 49 bytes.
In the Backups > LocomotionSample folder, the files for these months do not exist.
If I try to manually export from the monthly timeline view, I get an continual loading spinner.
I’ve attempted to run backups (powered, wi-fi, foreground, several overnights) but no success in filling the gap after several attempts.
That sounds odd. At first I assumed it meant you had no data for that period, which would be the normal result - no data = no export file / backup files. But it sounds like you do have data for that period, but the export is failing / taking too long.
In which case it could be a case of too much data. Though that would only explain the missing monthly GPX/JSON files, not the missing LocomotionSample backup files. The backup files are done as week files, to make sure they’re small enough to not hit up against any iOS memory limits (and to make updating them less energy expensive). A month export file failing due to being too big for memory, that I can understand, but having it happen with a week file, that seems quite unlikely.
Anyway, my recommendation would be to try exporting manually from the weekly timeline view instead of monthly timeline view. And if even that fails, you could try daily exports from timeline view. Though I would be very surprised if the weekly export failed.