iCloud deleted my photos from Shared Albums

Question

Level 1

6 points

iCloud deleted my photos from Shared Albums

Hello!

Yesterday, I had over 9500 photos on one of my Shared Albums I'm using to storage some pics and, all of the sudden, only 4950 appear. It has deleted the rest and I don't have them in my camera roll anymore. What has happened to those pics?? Why aren't they on my shared album anymore?

Is there any way to get them back? I'm trying to restore my iPhone from an old backup to see if the photos are still there, but since I had more than 28000 photos on the camera roll, it's taking ages to restore.

Another thing that has happened, they were deleted randomly. I had uploaded them by the day I took them and now some of them are gone.

I've been reading the forum and saw that the maximum per shared album is 5000 photos, so my question is: will those photos be back if I change the remaining ones to a new album??

I'd be very sad if they won't since the last pics I thought I uploaded them correctly, are very important to me.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Posted on Aug 28, 2016 6:21 PM

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Answer 1

LACAllen

Level 8

43,590 points

Aug 29, 2016 6:20 PM in response to TCPCohen

If you have iCloud Photo Library enabled, there is no Photo Stream.

Your photos were being (safely) synced to your iCloud account until you removed them from your Camera Roll. Then they were also deleted from iCloud, and then only in your shared albums.

When did you last delete photos from your camera roll? They would have gone from there into an album, called Recently Deleted for about 30 days. They they are gone for good.

Shared albums get their photos from the camera roll. No copies are made and stored in your albums. You can have one original photo that can be in multiple shared albums. Remove that photo from the camera roll, and it is removed from iCloud. You would have been told this by a prompt when you were deleting photos from the camera roll.

The photo remains in your shared albums, but possibly reduced in size and subject to loss as you have discovered.

There is nowhere to get them back from.

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Answer 2

LACAllen

Level 8

43,590 points

Aug 28, 2016 7:54 PM in response to TCPCohen

Were you also using iCloud Photo Library? Once you shared these photos, did you remove them from your phone?

What type of backup are you using to restore the photos?

Can you share your workflow? How did these photos get shared?

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Answer 3

TCPCohen Author

Level 1

6 points

Aug 29, 2016 1:37 AM in response to LACAllen

I had the photos in camera roll but I put them into shared albums and deleted them from the camera roll right after. I had 9000 something in the same album, but suddenly they disappeared and now I only have 4995.

I had a backup in iTunes but it hasn't fixed my problem. My photos are gone forever! I don't know why they were deleted randomly.

Is there any way to get them back? I'm really frustrated about this.

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Answer 4

LACAllen

Level 8

43,590 points

Aug 29, 2016 4:36 AM in response to TCPCohen

Using Shared Albums by themselves is not an effective backup strategy.

If you were using the iCloud Photo Library, your photos were not being backed up by either iTunes or iCloud.

There really is no way to know how to help you with so little information.

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Answer 5

TCPCohen Author

Level 1

6 points

Aug 29, 2016 8:01 AM in response to LACAllen

Yep, I see that now! I didn't even know there is a 5000-photo limit on every album. I called AppleCare and they told me it's unusual that the more recent pics are deleted. When you reach the limit, the newest pics start replacing the oldest ones. Therefore, I don't know why my newest pics are gone!

I thought the iTunes backup would save those pics somewhere but even the backups I did on Friday and Saturday are gone. I can't believe I'm paying for the iCloud storage and, all of the sudden, they start deleting my pics without advising me first.

Is there any other way to get those pics back?

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Answer 6

TCPCohen Author

Level 1

6 points

Aug 29, 2016 12:34 PM in response to Eric Root

If you mean a "shared album", not there is not. I haven't deleted anything from that album. iCloud deleted the last 2000 pics I uploaded on Saturday and I don't have them in my camera roll anymore.

I can't even find the backups I made with iTunes on that Saturday. There is only one backup made on Sunday.

I don't know what's going on with anything. I only want those pics back! 😟

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Answer 7

LACAllen

Level 8

43,590 points

Aug 29, 2016 4:52 PM in response to TCPCohen

You didn't answer this question from earlier... did you have iCloud Photo Library enabled?

If you did, your photos are NOT included with an iTunes or iCloud backup of your iOS device.

They would only exist in your camera roll, which you deleted, or in shared albums, which have limits you exceeded, or on a PC where you manually backed them up.

If you were syncing them with iCloud, removing them from the camera roll also removed them from iCloud.

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Answer 8

TCPCohen Author

Level 1

6 points

Aug 29, 2016 5:47 PM in response to LACAllen

Sorry I didn't see you question before... Yes, I have iCloud Photo Library and Upload to My Photo Stream enabled.

Then if they are not included with the backup and they aren't in shared albums either, where are they?

I asked AppleCare if I move some pics from that particular album to a new one, the lost pics will automatically start to show up on the old album. And they told me that could happen in 10% or 15% of the cases, and that the strange thing is that the album deleted the newest photos instead of the oldest ones.

This is why I still have some hope to recover those 4000 pics I took last week.

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Answer 9

TCPCohen Author

Level 1

6 points

Sep 10, 2016 7:18 AM in response to LACAllen

So... I've found this recovery backup program that lets me see the deleted photos in the encrypted backup. I knew they had to be there still!!

All the pics that were deleted by iCloud when I reached the maximum per album are like in a "shared album encrypted backup".

But now I have this problem: how do I get them back for free?

This program (iFonebox) lets me recover all of them but I'll have to pay. Does anyone know if I can do it for free?

I've tried to restore the backup to the iPhone but that's not helping because the pics aren't actually in the iCloud Photo Library.

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Answer 10

Eric Root

Level 10

685,257 points

Aug 29, 2016 11:39 AM in response to TCPCohen

Is there a recently deleted album?

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