How to back up an iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch be able to Recover Accidentally, Permanently Deleted Photos
The most important thing first. You need to make regular backups of your Photos to protect them against an accidental deletion, so you have a backup ready, when you need it.
The Photos.app offers only the Recently Deleted" album to recover deleted photos. This is described here: Get help with missing photos - Apple Support
After 30 days, or if you emptied Recently Deleted earlier, you have to fall back on your backups to recover accidentally deleted photos, if you noticed too late, that important photos are missing. Even iCloud Photos will not save your bacon, when you accidentally delete a photo, because the deletion will sync with iCloud across all devices and the photo will have been deleted from iCloud as well.
You can recover photos from a backup that you made before the photos have become permanently deleted by restoring the device from the backup, but you need the right kind of backup, a backup, that includes your photos. (Restore your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch from a backup - Apple Support and If you see error 9, 4005, 4013, or 4014 when you restore your iOS device - Apple Support)
When we restore a device from a backup, the contents of the device will be moved back in time. All recent documents and data will be missing. To save the current state, make a current backup, before you restore the device from the older backup, but do not overwrite the older backup (see the next section). With the current backup we can return to the current state, after we recovered and saved the missing photos.
What Kind of Device Backup Do We Need to Save the Photos?
There are two kinds of backups available for our mobile devices - iCloud backup and the backup on a computer. And the two kinds are saving different data. If a backup contains photos will depend on your iCloud Settings, see: About backups for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch – Apple Support
If you can recover missing photos from your backups will depend on four things:
- If you have been using iCloud Photos
- If you have been using "Optimise iPhone/iPad/iPod Storage" with iCloud
- And if your backup is an iCloud backup or a backup on a computer
- and the backup has to be made while the photos and videos are still on your device, before you delete them.
The bad news is, that you simply cannot recover permanently deleted photos from an iCloud backup, if you have been using iCloud Photos, when the backup has been made. An iCloud backup does not include the iCloud Photos. If you are using iCloud Photos, you have to make regularly backups on a computer.
There are three different cases to consider for the iCloud Photos Settings:
a) Using iCloud Photos, but not "Optimise iPhone/iPad/iPod Storage"
- The iCloud backup does not save the photos or videos that are already in iCloud Photos, and we cannot recover permanently deleted photos later, when they are no longer in iCloud Photos.
- The backups on a computer will save the photos, because they are also stored locally on the device, if the optimise option is not enabled.
We can use the backup on a computer (with iTunes or on a Mac with Catalina by syncing) to save our photos.
b) Using iCloud Photos with "Optimise iPhone/iPad/iPod Storage"
- The iCloud backup does not save the photos or videos that are already in iCloud Photos, just like a.1)
- The backup on a computer with iTunes or a backup on a mac with Catalina can only include the iCloud photos, that have currently not been optimised, when the backup is made. We will only get random results and cannot rely on this backup for our photos.
This is the worst situation - iCloud Photos with "optimise Storage" disables the backup of our photos for both backup methods. We have to download the photos to our computers from iCloud to back them up to be able to recover permanently deleted photos.
c) If iCloud Photos is not enabled at all :
- The iCloud backup will save our photos
- The backup on a computer will save the photos
Both methods will save the photos.
To sum up one can say:
- If we are not using iCloud Photos, either kind of iOS backup will save our photos.
If we are using iCloud Photos, we need to backup the iPhone to a computer and if we are reduced to "Optimize Storage" neither of the two available iOS backups will suffice to backup the photos. Download new photos regularly to a computer, for example from www.icloud.com or consider to use the following procedure to create frequent copies of your Photos on a computer: Archive or make copies of the information you store in iCloud . If you are using a Mac as well and are syncing the iCloud Photos Library to your Mac, make backups of your Mac (How to back up an optimized iCloud Photos Library - Apple Community)
How to make a current backup without overwriting the previous backup
Any new iCloud backup will overwrite the older backup. If you want to restore from an iCloud backup, make the current backup on a computer. On a computer you can create safety copies of the older backups.
In iTunes on a Mac you can create a copy of a backup with (iTunes > Preferences > Devices > Right-click on backup to save). On a PC see the very helpful user tip by turingtest2: Archive iPhone backup in Windows - Apple Community
On a Mac with Catalina, where we have to make the backup from the Finder, because iTunes is no longer available, you can find the backups made on a computer as described here: Locate backups of your iPhone, iPad and iPod touch – Apple Support
The location of the Backups folder will depend on the system version. Make a backup copy of this folder before creating newer backup.
The easiest way to avoid, that a new backup will delete the earlier backup, that we need, would be to make the new backup while signed into a different user account. Then the backup will be saved under the other user profile
- Choose Apple menu () > System Preferences, then click Users & Groups.
- Click
, then enter an administrator name and password. - Click the Add button (+) below the list of users.
- Complete the fields shown for a Standard or Administrator account, then click Create Account (or OK).
On a side note: Data Recovery Software
You will occasionally see posts recommending third-party data recovery software, promising to restore your photos directly from your device. Data Recovery software is scanning the storage for deleted files, that have not yet been overwritten by new data blocks. Or the software will try to extract photos from a backup, without the need to restore the device from the backup. If the photos have become permanently deleted only recently, you may be able to recover some of them with recovery software, but the result is uncertain, and such software is expensive. Recovery software needs to be run directly after deleting the data, or the data may have already been overwritten by new data. A month later, when the photos are no longer in Recently Deleted, recovery software has also no chance. It will not help in the typical situation, where we deleted photos because the device is low on storage and we have kept using the device after deleting the photos. And it will not help, if we are using iCloud Photos and optimise Storage, because the photos are in iCloud and may not have been mirrored on the device at all for a long time.
Use only software with a trial version, so you can see what will be recovered before you have to pay.
What are the risks of not having a recently created backup?
A contribution by ProustGiulio
"There are circumstances in which risks to our data may occur in many areas of our daily activity and
there are different methods of carrying out risk assessment. The best solutions are obtained by
knowing and implementing preventative actions to avoid them according to their probability of
happening and the seriousness of the consequences they could cause.
Analyzing risks in depth, you may come to have a matrix such as this:
where: green = acceptable, yellow = needs to be improved as soon as possible, red = an immediate
action is required.
Just to bring to your attention the risks inherent in using the iPhone/iPad without a backup, the worst
mistake you could make is to underestimate them. There are no accurate statistics for each risk, but
seeing/reading users questions in tech support forums, many risks are “Probable or Frequent” AND
their severity is almost always “Serious or Critical”.
If a backup procedure is always recommended for a desktop, this is even more indispensable when a
mobile device is used, since beyond the potential risks (typical of any electronic equipment), it is
necessary to consider that the device (which is not just a phone or a tablet, but more and more often
a real computer) is “mobile”. We take it with us all day, exposing it to far greater risks than those
faced by our Mac or PC (which we use at home or in the office). Backup your data on a regular basis
(at least once a week), and ALWAYS before updating, resetting, or having your iOS device serviced.
Some risks examples? Devices may suddenly stop working because of a hardware (defective
component) or software (operating system, or applications) problem. They may no longer reboot
after an iOS update, lose their connectivity, data integrity could become compromised, etc. It is also
possible to drop the iPhone/iPad onto a hard surface causing the screen to break, a thief could grab
your iPhone while you’re calling in a public place, at a restaurant a waiter may spill a mug of beer on
the table directly on your device, your six-year-old granddaughter, while not knowing your passcode,
may disable your iPhone when attempting to look at the photos on the device while you were out of
the room."
German version: Über das Wiederherstellen von versehentlich gelöschten Fotos auf iOS Geräten
Many thanks to ProustGiulio and turingtest2 for the very helpful comments on this user tip.