Q: Ipad disabled with thousands of children's photos not backed up with iTunes or icloud. Any recommendations for the recovery of the photos please?

Sorry, but if your device is disabled and you have no backup, then you will have no way to save any of the data on the device:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204306

You should be backing up your device regularly to iCloud or be importing your photos to a photos app on your computer. Otherwise, you will be risking losing those photos. If your device was lost, stolen, or run over by your car, you would be in the same situation. Really sorry about your photos.

Best of luck,

GB

Did you have iCloud enabled on the iPad? If so, it's possible you may have had the auto backup to iCloud enabled and there actually is an iCloud backup. If you call Apple Support, they can verify your identity and check your iCloud account for a backup.

Back up automatically in iCloud

After you've turned on iCloud Backup, iCloud can automatically back up your device each day. iCloud makes these daily automatic backups only if:

• Your device is connected to a power source.
• Your device is connected to a Wi-Fi network.
• Your device's screen is locked.
• You have enough available space in iCloud for the backup.

Well, you wouldn't want to rely on iCloud backup for all of your photos anyway. You should be importing your photos regularly to archive them. You can import them to a photos app on your computer (iPhoto or Photos on a Mac, or the photos app on a Windows machine), or upload them to a cloud service like Dropbox.

If you have a Mac and you are running the latest OS X on it, you can use iCloud Photo Library as a repository, however, iCloud Photo library also changes the way that photos are shared and displayed on your iOS devices, so you would want to read up on it before moving to that process.

But a simple and regular import to your computer is the easiest way to ensure that your photos are archived in a safe place:

PHOTO IMPORT IOS TO MAC/PC

Best of luck,

GB

Whether it's a computer, tablet or smart phone, you should never rely on a single point source for safeguarding important files. With electronic media, the only real safe guard for your files is to back them up to somewhere. Any device may fail or experience a problem at any time for any one of a thousand reasons.

I am sorry you have found yourself here. Hopefully you are very very upset with yourself and not Apple or technology in general.

To draw a comparison to car dealer cutting you a new key for the one you lost is a bit much to me. You have no sentimental attachment to a car like you do to those pictures. Data is nothing at all like a car. To some people, losing those pictures means little to nothing. To you it means much more. The significance of you losing your data upsets you but it is self inflicted. If instead of the forgotten passcode causing you to lose these pictures, it was a lost or stolen iPad, who would be upset with then?

Since day one of computing, having access to ones data has been job one. I am a wedding photographer. I have 3 duplicate copies of every image I create on separate hard drives at any given moment. I still fear data loss.

I have 3 duplicate copies of every image I create on separate hard drives at any given moment. I still fear data loss.

I hope at least one of those drives is in a different building, Burglary... fire...flood...   

Another country actually.

Apple didn't take any liberty at all. And you are NOT locked out of your iPad forever. If you want help, stick to the reality of the situation.

Your kids caused this problem. Not Apple.Not me, Not you.

Your kids.

It was compounded by your (admitted) lack of knowledge about how the passcode lock works. You also freely admit you have not backed up the content of the iPad. How does this become anybody's responsibility but your own? Yes, kids will be kids and they didn't know the consequences of their actions. Agreed. That's where the parent comes in. They don't know that drinking paint thinner will cause them great harm, but you do. So you keep it away from them. You protect them from themselves.

This is not about being the legitimate owner of your device. You are not locked out of ever using your iPad again. Here are the steps to remove the passcode and get back to using your iPad. You do not have to prove anything to anybody.

Use iTunes to restore your iPhone, iPad, or iPod to factory settings - Apple Support

If this iPad was lost and you did not know where it was, and you had sensitive personal or patient data on it. Would you not want your data to be inaccessible to whoever had the iPad in their possession? That's what the passcode does.

I offered you a hope that there may be a backup on iCloud. Have you invested the few minutes it takes to call Apple and see if there is one there? i don't get a sense that you are very technical, so I would really hate to see you not follow up on my suggestion because you simply want to be angry at Apple.

Saying there was "some problem with the automatic backup" does not, IMO, mean you don't have one. If you are that distraught over the potential loss of these images, why not follow up?

Not to add to your dissapointment, frustration and anger, but if you had this many images on your iPad, you should have made some efforts long ago to store copies of these images elsewhere.

If you never backed up all your images by transferring them to a photos app on a Mac or a PC, through saving photos in iTunes on a computer and backing up in iTunes on a computer, backing up your images onto iCloud OR to local external storage devices made for mobile devices, you needed to do this and before now when something detrimental, like this, has happened to your important and precious data.

This is why you need to have some method and/or more robust and stable hardware to periodically save your mobile device data to.

A mobile computing device is NOT a permanent place to your store important data to.

These devices are not as stable and robust enough as a full blown laptop or desktop computer to trust for ANY long-term data storage.

You need to have, at least, one other more robust and reliable source to store your important  and precious data and images that you never want to lose.

Even on a more robust computer, you need to have/should have a backup of your important data on your computer, that you never want to lose, in case of hard drive failure or some other computer failure.

FYI, cloud storage is fine, still much better to save to a local source like a computer or WiFi enabled portable and external hard drives designed to use with mobile devices.

These are available from Seagate or Western Digital and there is even a new WiFi enabled USB Flash drive from SanDisk called the SanDisk Connect that comes in a variety of storage sizes that works with any iDevice and you can transfer and store data on this flash drive wirelessly.

Sorry & Good Luck with all of this in the future.