ebedgert

Q: Why are photos being automatically deleted from my photo stream?

I have three iDevices that use the same Apple ID:  an iPad 2 running iOS 7, an iPad 4 running iOS 6, and an iPod Touch running iOS 6.

 

Up until a few weeks ago, they all lived happily together.  Whenever I saved a photo on any one of these devices, the photo would show up in the photo stream for all three devices.

 

However, recently the iPad 2 has been mysteriously showing less and less items in the photo stream.  More and more photos disappear from the photo stream every day (only on this iPad; the other iPad and the iPod have all the same photos in the stream.)  The iPad 2 now has only 100 photos while the iPad 4 and iPod have 800+ in the stream.


Why am I losing photos from the stream in the iPad 2, and why aren't the other devices behaving the same way?  I'm not deleting anything (at least, I'm not deleting the images that are mysteriously absent from the iPad 2), and there are no device storage space issues (plenty of space on each device).

 

The iPad 2 seems to keep only about a week or two's worth of photos in the stream.  Does this have something to do with the versions of iOS that the devices are running?  I don't understand why this behavior would have suddenly changed within the last couple weeks, though, since the iPad 2 has been running iOS7 for quite some time.  It just seems to be arbitrarily happening now.

 

How can I make my iPad stop removing photos from its version of the stream?  I'm an artist and use all my devices in back and forth fashion, so I need to them to all have the same photo stream content.

MacBook Air (11-inch Mid 2013), OS X Mavericks (10.9.1)

Posted on Jan 14, 2015 6:36 PM

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Q: Why are photos being automatically deleted from my photo stream?

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  • by ebedgert,

    ebedgert ebedgert Jan 14, 2015 6:37 PM in response to ebedgert
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Desktops
    Jan 14, 2015 6:37 PM in response to ebedgert

    To clarify - new photos will show up in iPad 2's stream.  But any ones older than a week, seem to be getting mysteriously deleted.

  • by Diavonex,

    Diavonex Diavonex Jan 14, 2015 6:56 PM in response to ebedgert
    Level 9 (66,687 points)
    Jan 14, 2015 6:56 PM in response to ebedgert

    My Photo is not a permanent storage space.


    The photos you upload to My Photo Stream are stored in iCloud for 30 days to give your devices plenty of time to connect and download them.


    http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201317



  • by ebedgert,

    ebedgert ebedgert Jan 15, 2015 7:04 AM in response to Diavonex
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Desktops
    Jan 15, 2015 7:04 AM in response to Diavonex

    But that doesn't explain why all of the photos are still appearing in the photo stream on my other devices.

     

    I want to know why my iPad 2 is acting differently than my other devices.

     

    Also, it has been deleting photos newer than 30 days.  I only have photos from the past week or so showing up in the photo stream on my iPad 2.  I have photos from the last 6 months showing up on my other devices.  All the devices are tied to the same Apple ID.  Why the discrepancy?  Something isn't behaving as it should.

  • by Diavonex,

    Diavonex Diavonex Jan 15, 2015 7:36 AM in response to ebedgert
    Level 9 (66,687 points)
    Jan 15, 2015 7:36 AM in response to ebedgert

    .

  • by Courcoul,

    Courcoul Jan 15, 2015 9:06 AM in response to ebedgert
    Level 6 (14,193 points)
    Jan 15, 2015 9:06 AM in response to ebedgert

    Do they open full size when tapped upon?

     

    I've seen this kind of mis-synchronization. I've conjectured that the second device may be loading up a stale and obsolete index of the global Photo Stream and you're seeing "ghosts" of photos from the past. This can be exacerbated by bad or slow Wi-Fi connectivity, since the Photo Stream only gets loaded/updated when the devices are connected this way, not by cellular link.

  • by Lois Green,

    Lois Green Lois Green Jan 15, 2015 7:50 PM in response to ebedgert
    Level 1 (75 points)
    Jan 15, 2015 7:50 PM in response to ebedgert

    1. Photos in My Photo Stream are saved on the iCloud server for 30 days. To save or back up these photos, you must save them from My Photo Stream to your iOS device. Select the photos and choose Share > Save Image. You can then back up your photos using iCloud or iTunes.

     

     

    2. Your iOS devices keep a rolling collection of your last 1000 photos in the Photos tab (or My Photo Stream album in iOS 7).

  • by ebedgert,

    ebedgert ebedgert Jan 16, 2015 8:39 AM in response to Lois Green
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Desktops
    Jan 16, 2015 8:39 AM in response to Lois Green

    "Photos in My Photo Stream are saved on the iCloud server for 30 days. "

     

    But if you would read my issue more closely, you would see that the problem is that my iPad 2 is deleting them BEFORE they are 30 days old... and my other two devices are not deleting them from the Photo Stream AT ALL.  Clearly, something unusual is happening here, and the behavior started recently, for no reason.

     

    (Why do people keep coming on here and repeating the official Apple line without actually reading what my problem is?)

     

    Courcoul, thanks for the insight.

  • by ivan1345,

    ivan1345 ivan1345 Jun 13, 2016 2:43 PM in response to ebedgert
    Level 1 (4 points)
    iPad
    Jun 13, 2016 2:43 PM in response to ebedgert

    I have the same problem .. my phone, which had the original copies on it, is deleting pictures without asking me.

    Worse, is that the pictures are also deleted on sync'd devices.