iPhone Photos disappeared

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Level 1

8 points

iPhone Photos disappeared

I shoot A LOT with my iPhone.

Yesterday my iPhone died, after re-charging it i turned it back on. It said "re-building photo library", once it was done. 2 months worth of pictures were gone, including a family vacation album.

really really frustrated and don't know what to do. I tried sync my phone with iTunes, nothing. all the same.

My wallpaper is a recent picture that i took, it still shows up.
any ideas, how to access the files inside my phone? i imagine those files are still there somewhere.

any help is greatly appreciated.
thank you

Message was edited by: carlo vega

iPhone 3G, Mac OS X (10.5.4)

Posted on Aug 8, 2010 11:40 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

BondiRocket

Level 1

4 points

Aug 9, 2010 3:51 AM in response to carlo vega

I lost all of my camera roll when I updated to iOS4.0. Fortunately, there is a way to recover them... It took two days to figure it out, but it was a total lifesaver.

1. The iPhone backup files are located in Users/[Name]/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup. So long as you backed up fairly recently, you are OK! Unfortunately they are in encrypted mySQL format
2. I had backed up since the update, making things harder, but was able to recover my old backup files from Time Machine
3. A utility for reading the backup files can be found at: http://supercrazyawesome.com/ (I don't make any promises about this application, it's not mine. But given what's at stake, I thought it worth the risk...)
4. Recover the iOS Files directory
5. Your photos are in the Media/DCIM folder

Thankfully, I got back all of my last 2 months photos including my son's birthday photos!

I hope this helps.

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Answer 2

roaminggnome

Level 10

106,365 points

Aug 8, 2010 11:43 AM in response to carlo vega

You didn't import two months of pics into your computer?

You should import your photos to your computer on a regular basis for this very reason.

You may be able to restore from the last backup and get the pics back.

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Answer 3

carlo vega Author

Level 1

8 points

Aug 8, 2010 12:03 PM in response to roaminggnome

The pictures were still inside the iPhone.

i downloaded a great app, PhoneView, and easily extracted all picture files.

i don't think it has to do much with frequency of backing up in this case, just the annoying fact that those pictures are NOT showing up in my library thumbnails anymore, all from just my battery dying... very frustrating.

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Answer 4

Aug 8, 2010 12:31 PM in response to carlo vega

Photos captured by your iPhone - all photos in your iPhone's Camera Roll are included with your iPhone's backup which is updated by iTunes as the first step during the iTunes sync process, but not a good idea to depend on your iPhone's backup or on your iPhone alone for this data which can be lost or stolen. Photos in your iPhone's Camera Roll should be imported by your computer as with any other digital camera. I import these photos with my computer often followed by deleting the photos from the Camera Roll after the import process is complete. If I want any of the imported photos available on my iPhone for viewing, I transfer the photos to my iPhone via the iTunes sync/transfer process which is selected under the Photos tab for my iPhone sync preferences with iTunes. I can create photos albums for select photos on my computer which can be transferred to my iPhone.

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