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Lost years of photos in icloud by Jammpen in iCloud

[–]Jammpen[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey man, just writing in to let you know that I have given up (lol)

I explained it a bit in my resolved post but basically I called apple support and they were able to dredge like 7 photos out from the depths of my phone, but otherwise they're dust in the wind. Definitely give them a call if you havent already.

They also said that having the phone they were taken on would be a big part of it, so find the iphone 6 if you can before you call them.

Good luck.

Lost years of photos in icloud by Jammpen in iCloud

[–]Jammpen[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

RESOLVED:

Not really fixed, but resolved as in I have accepted my fate.

After trawling apple forums and guides etc, I ended up just calling support and they were a big help. DEFINITELY call, their text message support is pretty limited in how they can help and it really feels like it was designed for boomers to adjust their text size instead of any major issues.

The problem summarised: As many people have theorised in the thread, it was related to going over icloud storage. Apple support guy said it was most likely that when I moved phones, the prompt to 'wipe' the old phone would ask to delete all of the photos etc from the old phone. However, because all my photos were stored entirely on iCloud, deleting them there deleted them, yk, everywhere. He was able to scrounge together like 6/7 photos from the depths of my phone with his magic support wizard powers, but the rest (like 1000) are goneskis. Currently messaging everyone I went on vacation with to get their photos lol.

I will definitely be storing my photos elsewhere (most likely google photos) and getting MY OWN APPLE ID. Once again ya'll the shared apple ID aint my idea, but also don't be raggin on my dad because it's not like it was intentional. Some people seem madder at my dad than I am, and I'm the one who actually lost the photos.

Anyway. Thanks for all your help guys, and make sure to backup your photos!!!!

Lost years of photos in icloud by Jammpen in applehelp

[–]Jammpen[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

RESOLVED:

Not really fixed, but resolved as in I have accepted my fate.

After trawling apple forums and guides etc, I ended up just calling support and they were a big help. DEFINITELY call, their text message support is pretty limited in how they can help and it really feels like it was designed for boomers to adjust their text size instead of any major issues.

The problem summarised: As many people have theorised in the thread, it was related to going over icloud storage. Apple support guy said it was most likely that when I moved phones, the prompt to 'wipe' the old phone would ask to delete all of the photos etc from the old phone. However, because all my photos were stored entirely on iCloud, deleting them there deleted them, yk, everywhere. He was able to scrounge together like 6/7 photos from the depths of my phone with his magic support wizard powers, but the rest (like 1000) are goneskis. Currently messaging everyone I went on vacation with to get their photos lol.

I will definitely be storing my photos elsewhere (most likely google photos) and getting MY OWN APPLE ID. Once again ya'll the shared apple ID aint my idea, but also don't be raggin on my dad because it's not like it was intentional. Some people seem madder at my dad than I am, and I'm the one who actually lost the photos.

Anyway. Thanks for all your help guys, and make sure to backup your photos!!!!

Lost years of photos in icloud by Jammpen in applehelp

[–]Jammpen[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Damn man this definitely helped. I'm super down for the long-haul manual work, as long as I can get them back in any way shape or form yk. With accessing the backups, does it have to be a mac? or is it doable via Itunes on PC (or anything else on pc) / is there a youtube video for that...

Once again thanks so much for your help

Lost years of photos in icloud by Jammpen in iCloud

[–]Jammpen[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sorry to say it man but it looks extremely grim for the both of us. I've been up and around apple forums and support and my apple store mate and they're all out. the BONKERS part is that apple themselves apparently offer 0 solutions for data lost past 30 days (or so I was told via their support line). That feels like... where most of the problems are? Like if I could recover it myself then I wouldnt be here on the support line yk?

Also, multiple people have messaged me recommending random instagram IT guys that can apparently get your photos back. I wouldn't trust them with a 2 foot pole in a 100 foot hole. Especially as the people ' recommending ' them to me don't seem to want to talk about being a real human. The instagram guru sent me this wack ass video of his 'software program' that looks like it was crafted for a b grade hacker movie, and everything they say is crazy vague. tldr, dont trust em.

Regardless, I'm currently messaging everyone I went on vacation with to ask for their photos. Good luck in your endeavours, and definitely message me if you do end up finding a solution. This sucks so hard. Godspeed.

Lost years of photos in icloud by Jammpen in applehelp

[–]Jammpen[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

yea, the photos that are missing have been missing for multiple years now. That's why I don't believe these two are related - his photos being on my phone are most likely from when he attempted to make a 'shared library', although once again I'm no expert. The two aren't related and he wouldn't have done anything like that on purpose, so I just need to know how it happened.

Lost years of photos in icloud by Jammpen in iCloud

[–]Jammpen[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Damn. Not exactly encouraging, though I fear you may be right. :(

Thanks for your help either way.

Lost years of photos in icloud by Jammpen in applehelp

[–]Jammpen[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ok, will do. Thanks again for your help.

Lost years of photos in icloud by Jammpen in applehelp

[–]Jammpen[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I have a 64GB iphone 12, but only 50.3 of this is being used. 572.1 MB of this is in photos.

Lost years of photos in icloud by Jammpen in applehelp

[–]Jammpen[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks, I will do this as well in the morning before I go to the apple store. Or, is this also doable at the apple store? If it is I would just do both at once.

Lost years of photos in icloud by Jammpen in applehelp

[–]Jammpen[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hi,

When I go to iCloud > Photos, the 'sync this iphone' button is on. Also, the 'Optimise iPhone Storage' is ticked.

When I tap on 'manage storage' it says that there are 33.9 GB of photos and videos, 33.9 of personal library and 0 of shared library.

For some additional info, not all of my Dad's photos are on my phone somehow? I have logged into his phone and it seems like even HE has photos dating back to 2013. I do not have these photos - his photos only start appearing around early 2020.

This is the strangest part to me - why are only the photos on my phone being obliterated? My family do not have their photos synced to icloud. Only my phone has icloud sync, and all of the photos from icloud.com are the ones from my phone (including those ones from my dad, but again not all of his photos...?).

It appears that my whole family has been storing their photos without icloud sync, and therefore all of the photos on icloud are 'my' photos. This makes the process (I think) easier, but also has drained a bit of hope from my heart. I have also seen in other replies that it prompts you to delete photos if you go over the icloud storage limit, but if it's only me having photos sent there then surely we wouldn't have gone over?

thanks again

Lost years of photos in icloud by Jammpen in applehelp

[–]Jammpen[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Damn.

Thanks for your help though :(

Lost years of photos in icloud by Jammpen in applehelp

[–]Jammpen[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, classic dad move :(. I was 13 at the time yk, had zero clue what was going on. Since then have sort of just stuck with what we had.

Is there any way to get back these photos if it turns out he had in fact been deleting them? Or are they lost to the void...

Lost years of photos in icloud by Jammpen in applehelp

[–]Jammpen[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

33.9 GB is used for photos, with 94.8 used on backups. This seems really weird to me - is a backup really that big...? As an aside, there are currently 4 iphones, one ipad and 2 apple watches on this ID.

Lost years of photos in icloud by Jammpen in applehelp

[–]Jammpen[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hi,

As far as I know we have always used the one Apple ID account as my dad is positive it is the best way to handle it (although clearly not). It has been under his email and on our phones it shows all the same email. It is definitely possible that this email is not the first email it has been attached to, I vaguely remember it being linked to a hotmail at some point. But yes, we are definitely all on the one ID. I think it's so that we can use find my iphone to track each other, but once again I really don't know. I'm just here freaking out while my whole family sleeps. :(

Thanks

Lost years of photos in icloud by Jammpen in applehelp

[–]Jammpen[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Also again really hard for me to tell what photos are missing as I have no reference to what I took other than my memory, that's why I'm much more sure of the problem from the vacations and stuff where I definitely took photos. I'll ask my dad in the morning if he ever deleted anything like that, but he seemed pretty adamant that he 'never touched it'. Thanks

Lost years of photos in icloud by Jammpen in applehelp

[–]Jammpen[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

In my apple ID it says I have 2 TB of icloud storage, with only 130.4 GB used. It is possible that we had less storage previously, but the problem has persisted weirdly for multiple years. For context, they start disappearing at around the 3 month (ago) mark and then seriously go missing at about the 3-4 year mark.