Restoring deleted photos from iPhone backup

Hello,


I have question on how apple backup works.


I backed up my iphone before I went on holidays to Windows computer. While on holidays, I deleted old photos (it’s on the backup) because I needed more storage.


My question is: if I do a backup now, would the current backup delete the old photos that I deleted from phone from the backup that I did before holidays?

Or would the new photos just get added to that backup?


And therefore when I buy new phone with bigger memory, I can then bring that old photos back into the new phone?


And if it does delete the photos, is there a work around it?


TIA!!


[Re-Titled by Moderator]

Original Title: Iphone Backup

iPhone 15 Pro Max, iOS 18

Posted on Sep 7, 2025 08:27 PM

Reply
3 replies

Sep 8, 2025 08:54 AM in response to mei196

Neither iCloud backup nor local computer backups don't allow you to choose bits and pieces of the backup-- it's all compressed and mixed up, so you must restore all or nothing. Two backups cannot be combined.


As muguy was saying, you need to copy your current pictures to some other place, like an external drive or even to iCloud Drive. Once you are sure they are safe, then you can restore this phone (or a new one) to that older backup, and then copy those offloaded pictures back to Photos on the iPhone.


Until then, make sure that your backup isn't overwritten by a new one!


As a thought, probably it would have been better to connect Photos to iCloud, and then those older pictures would be independent of backups. That won't help now, though.


Restoring deleted photos from iPhone backup

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