Workaround--How I put old photo stream on new device

So I bought a new iPhone and turned on PhotoStream and was pretty upset that only the last 30 days worth of photo stream photos made it back to my device... I did a lot of reading and found out that nothing was set-up wrong, it was just the way photo stream works.

Here's the skinny, for any device only the last 30 days worth of photo stream will be transfered to said device upon activation of PhotoStream--for those of us that want to have their old photo stream photo's on their new device there is a work around.

First, open iPhoto and select "iCloud" from the menu bar on the left, this will show you your photo stream. What was curious to me was that my iPhoto on my Mac Mini had 376 photos, as did my trusty old iPad, but not my brand new iPhone 5S, it only had 100 photos... This is actually how PhotoStream works though.

So to fix the disparity, and to keep from KEEPING duplicates, you need to go back to the first photo in your PhotoStream on your computer, for our purposes we'll call this photo 1 in your stream, and then highlight through the latest photo that is NOT on your new device, for me this was photo 276.

Next set-up a new folder on your desktop, and copy the missing photo's to the new folder.

Now, wait for them to copy to the desktop folder, this should take a few minutes,,,

Next, go back to iPhoto and delete the selected photos from your photo stream, a warning comes up and says this action cannot be undone, hit ok.

Then select all of the photos from the new folder, and drag them back to iPhoto, if it asks you about duplicates, hit import.

Now, wait while your photo stream re-builds ( this will likely only work for 1,000 photos or less )

Once the photo stream is correct across your devices, for me it was my Mac Mini, my iPad and my iPhone, go back to iPhoto and select the "Last Import" tab from the menu bar on the left, select all of the photos (they are dupicates) and delete them from there.

You will be left without duplicates and a rebuilt photo stream across your devices.