Recover photos from iCloud backup.

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Level 1

8 points

Recover photos from iCloud backup.

My parents and I just returned from a trip overseas. While there my mom and I got SIM cards for our iPhone 5s so we could use them. The people at the store we got the SIMs at made some changes to the settings and said that when we got back and put the original SIMs in the settings would return to their previous state. They didn't. When we got home Mom (or Dad, it's not clear who) got the bright idea of restoring Mom's phone to a backup from before we left. That put the settings right, but several hundred photos are gone. They had restored it before she imported her photos. So now she needs to get them back. She said it is backed up to iCloud, and her most recent backup before we got home should have all of her photos, right?

I just want to make sure before I do anything that the last backup will have them all and I don't need to do it in steps.

iPhone 5, iOS 8.3

Posted on Jul 1, 2015 2:28 PM

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Answer 1

brenden dv

Community Specialist

Jul 3, 2015 2:45 PM in response to batwzrd

Hi batwzrd,

I'm sorry to hear you are having these issues with your mother's iPhone. If the iPhone in question was backed up to iCloud prior to the the most recent restore from a local iTunes backup (I'm assuming), that backup should include photos unless iCloud Photo Library has been enabled, in which case they would be otherwise stored on iCloud. You may find the information outlined in the following article helpful:

Here’s what iCloud backs up:

[...]

Photos and videos on your iOS devices, unless you turn on iCloud Photo Library on your iOS device (iOS 8.1 or later). If you turn on iCloud Photo Library, your photos and videos are already stored in iCloud, so they aren’t included in your iCloud backup.

iCloud: iCloud storage and backup overview

Regards,

- Brenden

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Answer 2

batwzrd Author

Level 1

8 points

Jul 3, 2015 7:39 PM in response to brenden dv

Thank you Brenden,

Yes, it was backed up to iCloud. She got the phone just before we left, and I decided to try restoring her old phone instead. It is still going, but her photo's, all 1683 of them, are returning. The main problem now is space: her new phone is 32 GB but the old one is 16 GB. It has already alerted me that it is running out of room. I deleted some apps and got another 1.5 GB, but I'm not sure that will be enough.

I have a 32GB iPod touch I am not using. If the old phone can't hold everything I will try again with the iPod. There was a backup made the morning of the last day before she got home, so it has everything. It just takes a long time to download. Right now it has been working on it for about 27 hours.

Does anyone know if I can delete iPhoto and iMovie from the old phone without affecting the pictures and videos? It seems they should all be in Photos and Camera.

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