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deleted photos and how to recover them once they have already been deleted more than 30 days

photos and videos taken on my I phone

iPhone 12, iOS 16

Posted on Jul 28, 2023 2:09 AM

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3 replies

Jul 28, 2023 7:25 AM in response to Bgumm91

When you "delete" a file on a computer, it doesn't erase the file, it just makes that memory space available for other files to use. But it isn't like the file is lurking around in there, lost somewhere. The data for the file isn't even all together in one place-- it's spread all over the drive. As soon as the computer finds this memory space no longer used, it starts replacing the data there with new stuff. Soon the original picture file is completely overwritten.


There are companies out there who say they can recover files. They do it by collecting all the pieces of all the files that don't have a home, and then trying to find the parts you want and put them back together-- like those spy movies where they get the pieces from a shredder and tape them all back together as a sort of 100,000 piece jigsaw puzzle. As you can imagine, this is very expensive. And it only works if they can start immediately putting it back together, before much of it gets overwritten. If the pictures are on an external hard drive that's not used much, then they might be partially recoverable. But on your phone-- not a chance. That's why they say "permanently deleted."



deleted photos and how to recover them once they have already been deleted more than 30 days

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