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Why did iCloud delete all of my photos saved to it from the past several years when I have plenty of storage available?

I just realized today that my iCloud has been almost completely deleted. I had photos of my daughter as a baby that I can never get back now because they were randomly removed from my iCloud. I pay the extra 99 cents a month to have extra storage, so there's plenty of space on it. There were pictures from the past 6 years saved on there that are now gone. What happened? Can I get them back?

MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 10.13

Posted on Aug 3, 2020 10:44 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Aug 3, 2020 4:37 PM

It's possible that you device storage was insufficient or inadequate as well. iCloud is not a traditional cloud-based system like Dropbox, Google Drive or Photos, OneDrive, etc. Instead it's a system that syncs your data across all devices, stores that data in the cloud, and also stores a smaller footprint of that data on your device.


For example, folks believe that when they store photos in iCloud Photos, it's only being stored in the cloud but in actuality, it's also being stored on your device which takes up that device's storage space as well. That's why it's advised to utilize the Optimize Phone Storage feature (Settings > name > iCloud > Photos > Optimize Phone Storage) to minimize the storage space used on the device.

1 reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Aug 3, 2020 4:37 PM in response to holley148

It's possible that you device storage was insufficient or inadequate as well. iCloud is not a traditional cloud-based system like Dropbox, Google Drive or Photos, OneDrive, etc. Instead it's a system that syncs your data across all devices, stores that data in the cloud, and also stores a smaller footprint of that data on your device.


For example, folks believe that when they store photos in iCloud Photos, it's only being stored in the cloud but in actuality, it's also being stored on your device which takes up that device's storage space as well. That's why it's advised to utilize the Optimize Phone Storage feature (Settings > name > iCloud > Photos > Optimize Phone Storage) to minimize the storage space used on the device.

Why did iCloud delete all of my photos saved to it from the past several years when I have plenty of storage available?

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