Recovering missing / automatically deleted photos

Question

Level 1

9 points

Recovering missing / automatically deleted photos

I went on a vacation and during the week took a bunch of photos with my iPhone. I have iCloud and photos syncing enabled, and since my hotel provides WiFi, I assumed all photos will be automatically uploaded to my iCloud, the same as always (i didn’t change any settings). Last day of vacation my phone started acting up, and I wasn’t able to open any application anymore - Notes and Settings both showed a blank screen, same with Photos app and anything else I have on my phone. Since nothing worked, the only option was for me to turn off and back on the device. After a restart all apps started working normally, but I noticed that all my photos from the past week have vanished. When I scrolled up, the bar said Recovering from iCloud, so I let it be, and after about 4 hours the loading bar disappeared, but unfortunately no pictures appeared afterwards. Any new picture I take is automatically uploaded to the iCloud, so I don’t believe settings are a problem. I also never had this type of problem with apple devices.

I am using iPhone 14 Pro, iOS version 17.3.1. My iCloud also has about 100 GB free, and as mentioned photo syncing is enabled.

Is there a way to recover the missing memories? Even without iCloud I don't understand why the iPhone would delete any content locally stored on the device after a simple restart?

iPhone 14 Pro

Posted on Mar 8, 2024 07:16 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Em-Pe

Level 1

9 points

Mar 14, 2024 01:53 AM in response to Nephena

have exactly the same problem, I took a lot of photos while on holiday abroad. After updating to ios 17.4, I restarted my phone (the restart took an unusually long time, the phone couldn't be turned on for about a minute) and my photo gallery is missing photos from (at least) one day. The photos are neither among the hidden nor among the deleted photos. For a while, there was a message in the photo gallery saying "recovery from icloud is in progress" or something like that, and that gave me hope that the photos would reappear.

I still don't have the photos every now and then, even though the whole photo gallery is already synced with icloud.

Were you able to solve the problem somehow?

Thanks

Reply

Answer 2

Mar 8, 2024 09:01 AM in response to Nephena

That's awful-- I can't see that you did anything wrong-- it sounds like you did just as you should. And I'm flummoxed; I can't see any reason from your story that the pictures shouldn't be in iCloud Photos.

The only thing I can think to suggest is to make sure that you looked in the Recently Deleted album in iCloud. I'd be really happy if you came back and said you found them....

Reply

Answer 3

Nephena Author

Level 1

9 points

Mar 14, 2024 02:41 AM in response to Em-Pe

Unfortunately no. I tried restarting the phone again, updating to 17.4, recovery from iCloud, checking all files for the pictures, but nothing works.

So far since then my phone is working normally again, though I am super paranoid every day and am checking and re-checking that all files are always definitely synced to iCloud :/

Reply

Answer 4

Nephena Author

Level 1

9 points

Mar 8, 2024 11:07 AM in response to Richard.Taylor

I did, but unfortunately as I wasn’t the one deleting them, there is nothing in the folder :(

Reply

Answer 5

Mar 8, 2024 11:17 AM in response to Nephena

I figured. But, unfortunately, it's the only place I can think of to look.

Did you check on your phone, from day to day, that you had your pictures in the phone? I mean, could you phone have been messed up from the beginning and never even taken the pictures? (Grabbing at stars...)

Reply

Answer 6

Nephena Author

Level 1

9 points

Mar 8, 2024 01:14 PM in response to Richard.Taylor

Yes, I also sent a couple of the pictures I took to my friends and those are still in the chats, albeit in a lower quality. So the phone was definitely taking the pictures, that is why i am so confused about everything…

Reply

Answer 7

brianjsw

Level 1

15 points

Mar 18, 2024 05:33 PM in response to Nephena

Exact same thing happened to me on an iPhone 14 Pro Max. Said it was synching to iCloud for hours, but wasn't actually doing anything. So I figured I'd restart my phone. Phone refused to restart. So I did Volume Up, Down, then Power Button to make it restart.

Just like you noted, once the phone restarted the last 8 hours of my photos were permanently lost. It also deleted 8 hours worth of file system changes from other apps. I feel as if the phone was only saving things to "memory" for those 8 hours and never actually was writing anything to storage. That's the only way I can explain this colossal data loss scenario.

Reply

Answer 8

Mar 10, 2024 11:29 AM in response to Nephena

I think I might be a bit angry with that person...

Reply

Recovering missing / automatically deleted photos

Similar questions