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I lost approx 10000 photos which were not backed up in iCloud


I removed my iphone from find my app by mistake as i was trying to add another device and it erased my iphone data without giving me any warning. i lost approx 10000 photos which was not backed up in icloud.


[Edited by Moderator]



iPhone 13 Pro, 15

Posted on Jan 8, 2023 11:21 AM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Jan 8, 2023 11:34 AM

Backups must be made before disaster strikes, after is too late.


There are many ways of preserving photos and videos. Did you do any of these?


  • emailed, texted or messaged the photos to friends or family
  • iCloud photo sync
  • Manual iCloud backup
  • Automatic nightly iCloud backup
  • iTunes backup
  • Transfer your photos to your computer via USB cable
  • Apple Photo Stream
  • Sync to Google Photos
  • Sync to some other photo archiving service such as Shutterfly
  • Sync to Dropbox
  • Sync to box.com
  • Sync to Microsoft OneDrive
  • Sync to Amazon Photos
  • back up to Livedrive
  • Backup to any other backup or archiving service


A final option is if you synced your photos to iCloud, you have a Mac, and you use Time Machine to back up your Mac automatically, you can open Time Machine and restore the photo library to an earlier date. To do this on your Mac open Finder, then click on Pictures in the sidebar and launch Time Machine. Go to a time before the photos were deleted and restore

Photos Library.photoslibrary. (If you had ever changed the name of the photo library restore that file instead).


If the answer is no to all of the above your photos are gone forever.


3 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jan 8, 2023 11:34 AM in response to Arslanxx

Backups must be made before disaster strikes, after is too late.


There are many ways of preserving photos and videos. Did you do any of these?


  • emailed, texted or messaged the photos to friends or family
  • iCloud photo sync
  • Manual iCloud backup
  • Automatic nightly iCloud backup
  • iTunes backup
  • Transfer your photos to your computer via USB cable
  • Apple Photo Stream
  • Sync to Google Photos
  • Sync to some other photo archiving service such as Shutterfly
  • Sync to Dropbox
  • Sync to box.com
  • Sync to Microsoft OneDrive
  • Sync to Amazon Photos
  • back up to Livedrive
  • Backup to any other backup or archiving service


A final option is if you synced your photos to iCloud, you have a Mac, and you use Time Machine to back up your Mac automatically, you can open Time Machine and restore the photo library to an earlier date. To do this on your Mac open Finder, then click on Pictures in the sidebar and launch Time Machine. Go to a time before the photos were deleted and restore

Photos Library.photoslibrary. (If you had ever changed the name of the photo library restore that file instead).


If the answer is no to all of the above your photos are gone forever.


Jan 8, 2023 11:36 AM in response to Arslanxx

You learned the hard way the importance of back-ups. I do not consider iCloud to be a very safe place for storing photos. iCloud is primarily a synching service, which means that if a photo is accidentally deleted from one device, it will be deleted from all devices. It is safer to store your important photos and data to your computer or an external drive.

I lost approx 10000 photos which were not backed up in iCloud

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