Photos disappeared from iPad

Question

Level 1

16 points

Photos disappeared from iPad

Hi.

A few days ago I had over 2,000 photos on my iPad. A majority of the same photos were also on my iPhone 6s.

Since my iPad has much more storage space, I deleted hundreds of those duplicate photos from my iPhone to free up space.

I then backed up both devices to iCloud, not to iTunes.

When I went to PHOTOS on the iPad about half my photos were gone. Close to a thousand photos had vanished. They were the same photos I had deleted from my iPhone earlier.

I tried logging into my iCloud account to see if I could find the photos, but I was unable to. I got a window saying: "Connection Error. iCloud encountered an error while trying to connect to the server".

I then tried connecting the iPad to my iTunes account to find the photos, but I got: iTunes can't verify the identy of the server "safebrowsing.clients.google.com". I have no idea what that means.

Can someone please help me find those missing photos?

Thank you.

Posted on Feb 24, 2017 10:13 AM

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Answer 1

markwmsn

Level 6

16,715 points

Feb 24, 2017 4:52 PM in response to texasgail

Sounds like you may have activated iCloud Photo Library on both your iPad and your iPhone. If so, what you have seen is the expected behavior. The mission of iCloud Photo Library is to keep the same photos in the cloud and on all devices, adding any new photos to all devices and making any deletions on all devices.

If it has been less that 30 days since you deleted the photos, they should still be in your "Recently Deleted" album. If it has been more than 30 days, or if you also deleted the photos from Recently Deleted, the photos may be gone.

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Answer 2

texasgail Author

Level 1

16 points

Feb 24, 2017 6:09 PM in response to markwmsn

Thank you for your help.

Unfortunately, I deleted those photos from my Recently Deleted Photos on my iPhone to free up space. They are gone forever I suppose.

I never chose to delete those same photos from my iPad though. That's why I don't understand how they disappeared.

There is so much about iCloud that I don't understand. I wish I would have never started backing up my photos to iCloud because now I can't even see the photos I have saved.

In order to prevent this from happening again should I turn off iCloud on my iPhone and/or iPad & stop backing up my photos to iCloud?

Thanks again for your help.

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Answer 3

markwmsn

Level 6

16,715 points

Feb 24, 2017 8:25 PM in response to texasgail

Well, as I said, the mission of iCloud Photo Library is to keep the same photos in the cloud and on all devices, adding any new photos to all devices and making any deletions on all devices. Deleting photos on the iPhone deletes them from iCloud Photo Library, then from the iPhone.

iCloud Photo Library is not a backup system or a system for saving photos. It's a central repository that can be updated from your devices and vice versa.

If some of your devices don't have enough storage to hold all of your photos in full resolution, you can set the "Optimize iPhone/iPad/Mac Storage" option on them.

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