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Home videos deleted after auto-sync failure between iPhone and Laptop.

I tried to connect my phone to transfer home videos from my laptop to my iphone, the sync process started automatically and it failed after few second. Two videos that I had on my phone were automatically deleted. I tried to restore them with iCloud backup, no luck. I need to recover those home videos. Two issues:


1- Why my videos were removed from my iPhone due to a sync error?

2- Why iCloud backup doesn’t include home videos as part of the security backups?


Thanks in advance. Have a nice day!

iPhone XS, iOS 13

Posted on Jun 23, 2020 5:15 AM

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Posted on Jun 23, 2020 8:17 AM

agustinPore wrote:

......The two videos that I had on my phone, were only on my phone.....


This I suspect is your problem. Video for Apple TV app (and formerly movies app), can only reside on your phone by virtue of being synced from your computer. If as you say it was only on your phone, then you have removed it from your computer. Consequently the next time you connect your phone to sync they will be removed from your phone to reflect the state of your computer.


Question: why iCloud backup doesn’t include Home Videos as part of the backup?

I've already answered this. It's because it only backs up data that isn't elsewhere. Anything on your phone that's synced is assumed to be on your computer. You shouldn't have removed the 2 videos after syncing then to your phone. If you want to back up items that are on your phone and are also elsewhere, you will need to backup to the computer and not to the cloud.


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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jun 23, 2020 8:17 AM in response to agustinPore

agustinPore wrote:

......The two videos that I had on my phone, were only on my phone.....


This I suspect is your problem. Video for Apple TV app (and formerly movies app), can only reside on your phone by virtue of being synced from your computer. If as you say it was only on your phone, then you have removed it from your computer. Consequently the next time you connect your phone to sync they will be removed from your phone to reflect the state of your computer.


Question: why iCloud backup doesn’t include Home Videos as part of the backup?

I've already answered this. It's because it only backs up data that isn't elsewhere. Anything on your phone that's synced is assumed to be on your computer. You shouldn't have removed the 2 videos after syncing then to your phone. If you want to back up items that are on your phone and are also elsewhere, you will need to backup to the computer and not to the cloud.


Jun 23, 2020 5:36 AM in response to Winston Churchill

Good morning. I was trying to transfer a new home video that I have on my laptop into my iPhone, but the Auto-sync process failed, deleting other 2 home videos that I had on my phone, and of course, doesn’t transfer the new video neither.


My concerns are:

  • Why a sync process failure delete existing data, if it fails, the process should be rolled back automatically, I think.
  • Why iCloud backup doesn’t include home videos as part of the backup data?. I restored my phone using a backup made 3 days ago (2 days before this incident), but the videos weren’t restored.


Thanks

Jun 23, 2020 7:59 AM in response to Winston Churchill

Thanks for the answers. The two videos that I had on my phone, were only on my phone. After sync failure, they disappeared from the phone (and of course they are not in the laptop, because they never were there).


I will use an example to explain:

  • Date 06/21/20
  • Two videos exists in the iphone and are accesible using Apple TV > Library > home videos


  • Date 06/23/20
  • Try to add a new video from laptop into iPhone, sync process fails.
  • The Existing Two iPhone videos disappeared.
  • Tried restoring my iPhone data using an iCloud backup (created on 06/20/20, which should includes those 2 videos), once the backup restorations process is completed, the videos are still missing.


Question: why iCloud backup doesn’t include Home Videos as part of the backup?


Thanks.

Jun 23, 2020 6:32 AM in response to Winston Churchill

This is not photo/videos stored as part of Photos application, this is Home Videos that are available on Apple TV when you transfer home videos from laptop to the phone.


I’ll change the request since it looks like there is no way to retrieve deleted content of syncs errors,


Why the videos that I uploaded into my iPhone from my laptop, which are available in Apple TV > Library > Home Videos, are not included on iCloud backups?


Thanks.



Jun 23, 2020 7:01 AM in response to agustinPore

If it's on your phone by way of a sync process then it wont be backed up. Only data on your phone that isn't available elsewhere is backed up.


As such I would expect all your videos to be on your laptop, if something went wrong and you lost something then it will be available on your external backup of your laptop.


I wonder if you removed the 2 videos from your laptop at some point, but the deletion didn't take place until you connected things to try to sync the second lot of videos to your phone.

Jun 23, 2020 9:07 AM in response to Winston Churchill

Those videos were only on my phone.

My laptop is new, I don’t have anymore the laptop that I used to add those videos into my phone 2 years ago.


I would like to recover those videos, the iCloud backup that I have is only of my phone, since I don’t have a Mac attached to this appleID. So, I thought that the backup included the deleted videos, but looks like it didn’t.

Home videos deleted after auto-sync failure between iPhone and Laptop.

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