i recently got a hard drive to put all of my old backed uo photos all the way from 2015 and when i went onto my laptop to find them, they were all gone. I tried to find the old backups everywhere but theyre gone. What do i do?
MacBook Air 13″, macOS 10.13
iPhone backups only contain the photos that were on the device at the time of the backup, especially if you have been using iCloud Photos.
And, as you probably know, photos can not be extracted from an iPhone backup on your computer, you would have to restore the whole data to the point in time when the backup has been taken, copy the photos to your computer into a separate folder, and start all over again.
Backup methods for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch - Apple Support
Transfer photos and videos from your iPhone or iPad to your Mac or PC - Apple Support
I know this. I don’t think I’m explaining my issue properly. I’ve had these photos on my laptop since 2011. They were physically on my laptop and I never deleted them or moved them. i have been backing my phone up and storing photos on here since then as well. I recently backed up my newer phone and went to move all of the photos onto a hard drive. When l I did, all of the older photos disappeared. I tried to see if bringing up an older backup would assist the issue but everything is saying I never had an older backup which is untrue.
Did you save the photos in the Photo App on your Mac and you started using iCloud Photos?
In that case, removing the photos from your iPhone will also remove them from all other devices that are connected to iCloud and have iCloud Photos enabled.
Or did you copy the photos from your iPhone to your Mac, without using iCloud Photos?
One more thing about backups on a computer, worth to mention as well.
There is only one backup saved at a time, unless you use one of the backups to restore from, or archive the recent one. After that macOS will create a completely new backup, which will then be overwritten by the following backup.
Did you already check this article about finding backups on your computer?
Locate backups of your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch - Apple Support
Yes, I already have. I checked my icloud backups and just the basic ones i did on my laptop and even tried the time-machine app and nothing came up.
I can’t find my older iPhone backups
