iCloud Photos & other Data Deleted
My girlfriend is having a lot of trouble with her iPhone at the moment and I've searched the internet A LOT to try and find a solution or someone with a similar problem. I'm posting here with hopes that somebody with more knowledge can help.
She has a lot of photos on her phone (40,000+) and pays for 2GB storage in iCloud. Now for the past few weeks, she keeps getting a message saying iPhone storage full. Even though her iCloud has plenty of space (classic, I know). However, at the bottom of photos it would say "Restoring from iCloud.." for weeks & sometimes it would pause to "Optimise battery performance" or something similar. It would give the option to sync for 1 hour and nothing would happen.
Since this was happening for so long, I did a lot of research and couldn't find the solution online anywhere. I decided it was best to perform a backup to iCloud & then reset and restore from that backup. So that's what I did.
IMPORTANT NOTE: My girlfriend was adamant on the fact that I can't lose her TikTok drafts as this is all part of her work. She had about 80-100GB stored on her iPhone from Tiktok alone. I did my research and learnt that you can restore it all as part of the iCloud backup. When I backed up her phone at about 18:30 the size of the backup was about 220GB.
When I restored her phone, it took a very longtime and we left it overnight. When we woke up to check it, she only had about 2,000 photos and videos on her phone, and her TikTok drafts were completely gone. When I went back into iCloud there was a new backup from about 19:45 last night that was now only 130GB in size. Which would match up if TikTok was deleted from the previous backup.
When I go to the iCloud website, all 40,000+ photos are on iCloud still. But her phone only has 2,000. At the bottom of photos it says "syncing 200 photos, 30 videos, 1 other item".
Info that might help:
- She has an iPhone 13 Pro 256GB
- She has 2TB iCloud storage (with over 1TB free)
- Internet speed: 90Mbps Download & 90Mbps Upload. Very stable.
- She bought her phone in the UK, but we are now in Indonesia. She is PERMINENTLY connected to a UK server via NordVPN. This is because various social media algorithms need to be directed to a UK audience.
My main Questions:
- If I reset her phone again, will it give me the option to the previous backup of 220GB in hopes that TikTok drafts are recovered?
- Is being connected to the VPN causing any issues?
- How can I get all her photos back on her phone (but on iCloud keeping her iPhone storage free)?
I appreciate your help.
iPhone 13 Pro
