6 Months of Photos & Video in the Middle of My Roll Disappeared From iCloud & iPhone:

[robotchicken]

Has this happened to anyone?

Essentially a big chunk in the middle of my roll of photos/videos (like over a 1000) that I had on iCloud and my iPhone has just vanished. Everything from January to June 2020 is gone. I do however have several hundreds of photos and video before and after the missing months.

Background: A few months ago I needed my iPhone 11 Pro replaced. The Apple store employee advised that I pay to upgrade my iCloud so we can sync the existing phone fully and not lose anything. We did that and I confirmed myself on laptop that everything was there on icloud.com and even checked the hidden folders were there.

- Got the replacement phone. Apple employee then restores new factory phone from the iCloud I believe. I see my old Apps come back on the new Iphone and many of my pictures.

-Employee did check off to "optimize iPhone storage" in the photo settings of my iPhone as he said otherwise it would take long but it also didn't matter because it was all on the cloud.

-Syncing is going to take hours, employee said it would continue to sync while connected to wifi and I could do this at home over several days if need be.
At home a few days later I sign in to iCloud and again see all my pictures and I am not missing a 5-month chunk of data.

-Over the next couple of months, I rewatch videos from the missing timeline. Sometimes it looks like things are missing, but then it shows up again. Or maybe this part is in my head?

-After a few more days of seeing that months of pictures are missing I log into icloud.com expecting it to be there and this is a syncing issue but those months were missing from the iCloud as well! (heart drops here)

FYI
- Nothing in deleted folders (I don't delete pictures but had been checking the folder in case).
- No second iCloud account.
- Nothing present when I go to "restore files" option in iCloud.
- I only updated my IOS version recently, well after the loss.
- No one else has access to my phone.
A ticket has been opened and escalated with Apple but so far no help.

As I have many months of pictures before and after the missing months, I don't get how these are just gone! And of course, they were some of the most important personally, so this has me pretty stressed.

Thanks for any insight.

 

[robotchicken]

Hi - thanks, I will try that. It's been with Apple Engineering for a couple of weeks and they just told me they don't know at all what happened and can't locate the missing months, but do see that they are gone, they have looked at backups from the past and can't see it. I have asked them to escalate further but I don't know if there is a further beyond that. I knew for a good reason I did not trust the icloud.

Hi, In case you can't find any photos and videos in iCloud. I would suggest you need to try data recovery software such as Stellar data recovery for iPhone which help you to retrieve deleted or lost iPhone videos and photos from your iPhone as well as iCloud/iTunes. Thanks!

 

[Megburke17]

This same thing happened to me. Did you end up being able to recover the missing months. Same months missing Jan-June but have all
Pics from before and after that?!!

 

[BellaG]

The same exact thing happened to me. Jan 2020-Jun 2020 of my fotos are missing on my iCloud and it’s the most important month to me when my daughter was born. All my hospital pictures and newborn baby pics of my daughter were in those months. I’m freaking out and want to cry!!!!

 

[hieronymus_posh]

I just wanted to comment that this also just happened to me. 2013-2019 photos are all gone from my iCloud after buying a new phone. This seems pretty unacceptable to me, and I cannot believe how many of us there are. I tried twice with Apple on the phone and once in store, and the answer is always "we don't know why they are gone and we can't do anything". I wonder how many more people this has happened to. As someone that has used Apple products exclusively for 10+ years, this leaves a very sour taste in my mouth. Also, doesn't it seem like we should be compensated in some way? How can a paid service just fail like this and get away with it?

 

[hieronymus_posh]

The same exact thing happened to me. Jan 2020-Jun 2020 of my fotos are missing on my iCloud and it’s the most important month to me when my daughter was born. All my hospital pictures and newborn baby pics of my daughter were in those months. I’m freaking out and want to cry!!!!

I am so sorry this happened to you too. I cannot imagine how upsetting it would be to lose photos from such a precious time.

 

[Elle253]

THE SAME THING happened to me. Except I had pictures from 2008-March 2017 deleted. However video is saved which is so weird. No photos but video. My wedding, both my kids birth and so on. I am heartbroken. How do they just get deleted?! I also upgraded phones from the iPhone 11 max to 13 max around Thanksgiving 21'. I didn't notice until much later they were all missing. Has anyone had any luck with the software stellar data recovery??? please let me know if you have had ANY luck with anything. Thank you. - A devastated mother.

 

[Elle253]

Hi - thanks, I will try that. It's been with Apple Engineering for a couple of weeks and they just told me they don't know at all what happened and can't locate the missing months, but do see that they are gone, they have looked at backups from the past and can't see it. I have asked them to escalate further but I don't know if there is a further beyond that. I knew for a good reason I did not trust the icloud.

Has anyone had any luck with recovering any lost photos?? if so what did you do?

 

[Elle253]

Hi - thanks, I will try that. It's been with Apple Engineering for a couple of weeks and they just told me they don't know at all what happened and can't locate the missing months, but do see that they are gone, they have looked at backups from the past and can't see it. I have asked them to escalate further but I don't know if there is a further beyond that. I knew for a good reason I did not trust the icloud.

Hi there, I'm wondering did you end up doing anything that worked to recover your lost photos? The same thing happened to me and I am a complete mess because just like everyone, pictures are precious! I have no clue what happened and am beyond devastated.

 

[Ivymike07]

Does anyone found a solution? All my photos of my only time in another country got deleted haha one day all disappear, leaving no trace, from January till December of 2020.