i cloud

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i cloud

i have an iPhone 5s running on iOS 7.1.2 i have not upgraded because i do not have space on my phone. i started using iCloud about a year ago. i only uploaded once my phone maxed out on storage and i was forced. so once i did that and erase all photos off my phone, i began taking more pictures. well I'm at that time again and when i do a backup my total GB storage never changes, theres over 2 thousand pictures so I'm sure it would change the storage left. so i went on my macbook pro to access my photos on iCloud, the ones i previously downloaded and theres NOTHING there. I'm devastated because those are photos of my kids that ill never get back. Ive looked online and I've done everything they say to do and still no luck finding those photos. now I'm afraid to do anything with iCloud which is disappointing because i pay for 200GB every month. can someone please help me. I'm planning a trip to the apple store on Friday but would really love to figure this out before hand since the apple store is over an hour away from me. Thanks in advance to anyone reading this.

Posted on Jun 10, 2015 10:19 PM

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Answer 1

Jun 10, 2015 10:25 PM in response to Nemcik0912

I think you may be confused about the various iCloud services. Photos you take do not count against your storage, so if you are paying for 200GB just for photos, that's a waste. It might also explain why the storage size doesn't change after backing up.

Photos are stored in Photo Stream. This does not count against your storage, as mentioned above. Furthermore, photos are set to delete after a certain amount of time. You can auto-import them to your Mac so they would be saved locally, but that's something you would have had to set up. Here are a couple of relevant FAQs from My Photo Stream FAQ - Apple Support:

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.

and:

How many photos are stored in My Photo Stream on my devices and computers?

My Photo Stream 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 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 download all of your photos from My Photo Stream automatically.

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 import into your Events, Projects, Photos, Faces, and Places folders in iPhoto or Aperture.

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Answer 2

Nemcik0912 Author

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Jun 10, 2015 10:38 PM in response to stevejobsfan0123

the reason I'm going to disagree with you is because my boyfriend has iCloud on his devices as well and he can access his but for some reason i can not access mind. he's been without access to a computer to download his photos for almost two years now and still manages to have all his photos. he doesn't understand whats going on with mine. 😟 apple told me they should stay in the cloud. unless i delete them they should always be there. i don't have photo streaming on either.

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Answer 3

Jun 10, 2015 10:40 PM in response to Nemcik0912

But are his photos in his Camera Roll album (stored locally on his device and not in the cloud) or in the Photo Stream album?

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Answer 4

Nemcik0912 Author

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Jun 10, 2015 11:22 PM in response to stevejobsfan0123

no they are deleted off his devices totally. He's also had to get new devices because he breaks them due to his line of work and always manages to have photos from years ago. and even ones he's recently taken in the last 6 months.

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