iCloud photos disappeared

Hello Hueyrab

That all depends on how long they have been on your Photo Stream. Your Photo Stream will only hold your photos for 30 days; you would need to back them up with either creating a Shared Photo Stream or copying them to your computer.

iCloud: My Photo Stream FAQ

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4486

Does using My Photo Stream substitute for using iCloud Backup or iTunes to back up the photos in my Camera Roll ?

No. Photos in My Photo Stream are saved on the iCloud server for 30 days. To save or back up these photos, you must copy them from My Photo Stream to your Camera Roll on your iOS device. You can then back up your Camera Roll using iCloud or iTunes.

Regards,

-Norm G.

The 30 day limit has always been there. Your last 1000 photo stream photos will remain on your iOS devices until you delete them, but they only remain in iCloud for 30 days. What this means is that if you ever turn photo stream off, restore or replace your phone, when you turn it back on you will only get back the photos from the last 30 days. That's why you should save them to your camera roll (unless already there) and import them to your computer for safekeeping, as explained here: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4083.

I have also just recently had the very same issue.

I had over 900 pictures showing in My Photo Stream from over a 6 month period (Yes beyond the supposed 30 day limit) and then suddlenly they have all gone

Does anyone know how to get them back?

I just had a similiar issue. I had over 600 photos that had been on there since I got my iPhone4v about 2 years ago and all of a sudden they just disappeared. I had never heard of the 30 day rule until they all disappeared but I still don't understand why they did from Norm's answer. I never altered my photo stream settings or anything, I just went in to find a photo one day and found that they were all missing.

I found a fix guys, had the same thing... photos gone from camera role but still showed they are occupying the memory on the iphone.

if you download iFunbox (www.i-funbox.com) you will be able to acccess you iphone, ipod, ipad system and can just copy to computer the jpg files from the RAW FILE SYSTEM or CAMERA tab by selecting all the photos.

Did Anyone get a fix? I had the same issue.

They don't store for 30 days. The items that were only 4 days old are gone.

Well, a program that looks at my backups told the whole story. At 10:49pm on July 30th icloud didn't backup my iphone, it erased data instead. Few photos and no videos survived. Everything after July 4th is gone. I will still go to the "genius" bar and see what they can do. Maybe there is something hidden. .II'

BTW...I'm not the only one. An IT friend is hearing this from others.

Did you find out anything at all? This has happened to my daughters iphone 4

Here's the thing ... people ... (talking to y'all ... ) the Photo Stream is not and never was meant for "storage" or to "keep pictures". It was meant for easily sharing pictures ... and that would be up to 1,000 pictures, and for no longer than 30 days. Those are your "numbers" to remember for Photo Stream, you are going to see no more than 1,000 at a time and also for no longer than 30 days.

Now here's the confusing thing - for people - about Photo Stream. The "actual" Photo Stream exists "in the cloud" ... while your iPhone or iPad can keep those pictures on that device (namely "just" on that device) for longer and if I remember correctly, for more than 1000 pictures ... but it's been a while since I checked that. So, it appears that it's permanent to you, because they sit on your own iOS device. The thing is ... about that ... is that while some pictures may be "on your own device" ... they are NOT in the "cloud" where Photo Stream originally resides. In the cloud, if it's more than 1000 pictures or it's longer than 30 days ... it's NO LONGER IN THE CLOUD.

As long as nothing happens with your data on your own device, those pictures stay on your device, BUT ... since it's considered temporary and since Photo Stream is "in the cloud" ... your "backups" will NOT back up those Photo Stream pictures. But, all is well ... as long as ... nothing happens to your data. However, you are skating on very thin ice, because those pictures are not backed up and you'll never be able to recover them, if they are over the 1000 count and over the 30 day time span. Again, they are "temporary" and have always been. But, many people are MISTAKENLY treating them as "permanent" and therefore get mad when they DISAPPEAR. Well, that's what happens with "temporary" ... it eventually disappears!

The idea here was to allow you to use Photo Stream for easy sharing, and then you just copy the pictures from the Photo Stream over to your Camera Roll, where they are not considered temporary, but more permanent. AND ... your Camera Roll is backed up on iCloud Backup and with iTunes Backup.

When someone says, "My Photo Stream pictures disappeared!" ... that basically means that they didn't ever understand what Photo Stream was about!

If you left them in the "Photo Stream" album they were NEVER backed up. You thought wrong on that. If you transferred those photos from "Photo Stream" to your "Camera Roll" ... then they were backed up, if you did the iCloud Backup or the iTunes Backup.

SO ... the question is ... "Did you transfer the photos from Photo Stream to Camera Roll, in order to have them backed up?"

There's an outside chance that you might be able to get them back, but it's not guaranteed at all, because if you didn't transfer the photos over to the Camera Roll, that you wanted to keep, you weren't using it the way it was supposed to be used. So, right now, it's a gamble if they are there or not.

But, here's the outside chance that might help you. You have to get some special software that runs on your computer and when the iOS device is hooked up to your computer, this software will "scavenge" the deleted files and see if it can find any photos (also it does this for other files, too, besides photos). If it can find some deleted photos, you'll be able to recover them. But, sometimes deleted photos are "overwritten" by other apps on your iOS device, basically because that deleted file is now considered "open space" and can be used by any other app. It's been "deleted" so it's not supposed to be there anymore. The secret is that it is still there, but just not "considered" to be there.

You'll have to search on the Internet for software like that, and it's a "buyer beware" situation, because many of these programs are trash and no good. So, you'll have to get recommendations from other "legitimate users" (not fake users) that it's good software. You'll have to buy the software, and if it's good (from recommendations from other users) ... you'll get some photos back.

This is not an Apple supported way of doing it, but it is there for those who want to try it ... and ... it will cost you money for the software.

You may have never heard of the 30-day rule, but it was set up that way from the beginning. It's never changed since the day it started! It's too bad you weren't aware of it, but that's the way it works in the software world and with electronic devices ... just because you don't know something works a certain way doesn't "cut you any slack" when you run up against it.

There are no settings for you to alter. It was created that way from the beginning.