Yes, you are wrong.
iCloud is primarily a sync tool and therefore only keeps 30 days of photos available to be accessed by other devices.
How long are My Photo Stream photos stored in iCloud?
The photos you upload to My Photo Stream are stored in iCloud for 30 days to give your devices plenty of time to connect and download them.
How many photos are stored in My Photo Stream on my devices and computers?
iCloud pushes all your photos to the My Photo Stream album on your devices and computers, and manages them efficiently, so you don’t run out of storage space.
Your iOS devices keep a rolling collection of your last 1000 photos in the My Photo Stream album. From there, you can browse your recent photos or move the ones you like to your Camera Roll or another album to keep them on your device forever.
Because your Mac and PC have more storage than your iOS devices, you can choose to have all of your My Photo Stream photos automatically downloaded. In iPhoto or Aperture preferences on your Mac, select Photos (or Photo Stream) > My Photo Stream > Automatic Import. All of your photo stream photos will be imported into your Events, Projects, Photos, Faces, and Places folders in iPhoto or Aperture. On your PC with My Photo Stream enabled in the Control Panel, all of your photos will be imported into C:\\Users\<user name>\Pictures\iCloud Photos\My Photo Stream. For iCloud Control Panel 2.0 to 2.1.2 users, the path isC:\\Users\<user name>\Pictures\Photo Stream\My Photo Stream
The only backups in iCloud are your iOS backups. The only photos backed up in an iOS backup are Camera Roll photos, which you deleted.
Here’s what iCloud backs up:
- Purchased history for music, movies, TV shows, apps, and booksYour iCloud backup includes information about the content you have purchased, but not the purchased content itself. When you restore from an iCloud backup, your purchased content is automatically downloaded from the iTunes Store, App Store, or iBooks Store. Automatic downloading is based on iTunes in the Cloud availability by country, and previous purchases may be unavailable if they have been refunded or are no longer available in the store.
- Photos and videos in your Camera Roll
- Device settings
- App data
- Home screen and app organization
- iMessage, text (SMS), and MMS messages
- Ringtones
- Visual Voicemail
Your iOS device backup only includes data and settings stored on your device. It doesn't include data already stored in iCloud, for example contacts, calendars, bookmarks, mail messages, notes, shared photo streams, My Photo Stream, and documents you save in iCloud using iOS apps and Mac apps.
To keep import photos and data safe, they should be transfered to a computer then backed up.
iOS: Importing personal photos and videos from iOS devices to your computer
