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fourtet102

Q: After I purchased iCloud storage 30Gb worth of pictures disappeared from my iPhone...

Hello

 

Day after hard drive on my iMac failed, I decided to buy a piece of mind in 50Gb worth of iCloud storage to transfer from iPhone 6 all my pictures (since 2005).  I logged in to iCloud next day to see if upload was successful and next checked my phone to find out that 5 years from my photo library is gone!!!  I'm hoping TimeMachine will be able to recover all of them but for Christ how is this even possible?  Can anyone tell me whether there's a pattern to get lost pictures back?  It is yet another black eye in recent months to what I've experienced in Apple ecosystem.

iPhone 6, iOS 9.1

Posted on Nov 7, 2015 7:26 PM

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Q: After I purchased iCloud storage 30Gb worth of pictures disappeared from my iPhone...

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  • Helpful answers

  • by gail from maine,

    gail from maine gail from maine Nov 7, 2015 7:29 PM in response to fourtet102
    Level 7 (26,134 points)
    iCloud
    Nov 7, 2015 7:29 PM in response to fourtet102

    You uploaded your photos to iCloud Photo Library?  If so, where did you upload them from since you indicated that your hard drive had failed? Did you have the entire collection loaded to your iPhone 6 and uploaded them from there? Did you delete them from your iPhone?

     

    Cheers,

     

    GB

  • by fourtet102,

    fourtet102 fourtet102 Nov 7, 2015 7:36 PM in response to gail from maine
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 7, 2015 7:36 PM in response to gail from maine

    I uploaded pictures from my iPhone and did not delete a single one.

  • by gail from maine,

    gail from maine gail from maine Nov 7, 2015 7:48 PM in response to fourtet102
    Level 7 (26,134 points)
    iCloud
    Nov 7, 2015 7:48 PM in response to fourtet102

    So, can you provide a little more information about what you did exactly, and what you saw happening? Did you see the upload complete, or did you leave the phone connected to Wifi and let it continue to upload when you turned in for the night? What do you see when you go to Settings>iCloud>Photos on your device?

     

    What is it that you are seeing in your Photos app on your device?

     

    GB

  • by fourtet102,

    fourtet102 fourtet102 Nov 8, 2015 2:30 AM in response to gail from maine
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 8, 2015 2:30 AM in response to gail from maine

    Process controlling photo upload into iCloud seems to be very loose as there's no status information in this regard.  I wasn't doing anything besides "opting in" for keeping original photos.

     

    What I see in iCloud setting is that items are uploading and really nothing else......   

     

    What concerns me the most is that my phone's memory shows 30GB more in available space then 24 hours ago.....  at the same time I can't imagine any electronic device would be able to delete substantial amount of data without a single warning.....

  • by pache59,

    pache59 pache59 Nov 8, 2015 5:30 AM in response to fourtet102
    Level 1 (20 points)
    Nov 8, 2015 5:30 AM in response to fourtet102

    If you log in to iCloud.com from a computer and click on photos, are any of the pictures there?

  • by fourtet102,

    fourtet102 fourtet102 Nov 8, 2015 7:29 AM in response to pache59
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 8, 2015 7:29 AM in response to pache59

    Nope :/

  • by fromsouth,Solvedanswer

    fromsouth fromsouth Nov 8, 2015 8:53 AM in response to gail from maine
    Level 5 (4,806 points)
    iCloud
    Nov 8, 2015 8:53 AM in response to gail from maine

    Simple.

    Iphone didn't exist in 2005. Pictures could have only been synced off the computer. OP did turn the library on. There was a warning that "all synced pictures will be removed". They were removed. Glad OP has time machine.

    What OP should have done if he/she wanted to use library properly - start upload from the computer since it was original source for the phone.  When he gets new one and restores time machine backup icloud library can be started properly. Now finally even on Windows.

    Let me predict his next post.

    "I didn't have or didn't see the warning"

  • by fourtet102,

    fourtet102 fourtet102 Nov 8, 2015 8:52 AM in response to fromsouth
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 8, 2015 8:52 AM in response to fromsouth

    :-)  No need to be overly presumptive :-)  Thank you all for valuable input.  I became plug and play type of guy spoiled by Apple hence didn't think of possible outcome from "can't be synced with iTunes" type of message that I saw..... valuable lesson for me for sure....

     

    Question - if I upload photos from my iMac to iCloud, is it save to assume nothing funky will happen?

     

    Thank you again - this forum proves to be great resource!!!

  • by fromsouth,

    fromsouth fromsouth Nov 8, 2015 11:18 AM in response to fourtet102
    Level 5 (4,806 points)
    iCloud
    Nov 8, 2015 11:18 AM in response to fourtet102

    Here is how to do that properly on the Mac.

    Get help with your iCloud Photo Library - Apple Support

     

    And there is a huge change finally library is also supported for upload on Windows 7 or higher.

    Set up and use iCloud Photo Library on your Windows PC - Apple Support

     

     

    Good for you - having a backup.