Apple deleting photos?

[Badabingbadabooom]

Can someone please shed some light on this?

I have, several times over the last few years, done big photo dumps from my iphone to a laptop and a usb storage stick.

Now when I look back through these folders the majority of the pictures are gone. WHY?

In a given month – say April 2019 – there will be a handful of pics. Say, 10 screenshots, a couple of pictures of the dog and 7 selfies.

But I went to France for 5 days that month. I took a million pics.

Every month is the same – another month in 2020 I went on holiday with my partner, and according to the folder I took only 4 pics in 10 days.

I’ve long suspected that apple encodes files in some way that makes this happen, in order to discourage transfer away from their cloud storage.

As I say, it’s not just one device this is happening on – I started using USB sticks when I noticed thus happening on my laptop. And it’s the same.

Can anyone with some technical knowledge shed some light on this????

No idea but think this has happened to me too 😢

They will be on your iCloud and you’ll have to jump though a million and one hoops to get them back. It’s why I don’t use it at all.

But how does it happen when I’ve saved the pictures completely away from cloud, phone, etc?

Some of them I’ve saved, checked they’re all present and correct in the offline location, then gone ahead and deleted from my phone.

How can they later randomly self-destruct??

It’s so sad!!

Such a horrible ruse.

It depends on whether you have the iPhone set to keep originals on the phone.

I suggest

1. Log into iCloud.com
2. See if the photos are there.
3. Share the outcome.

They’ve gone off the usb stick??
i have Flickr which I pay for for unlimited storage and it syncs to pull photos off your camera roll. Apple do delete pictures from camera roll.

@Badabingbadabooom look in the all photos, hopefully they are there. For some reason the years, months and days only show some of the pics. I’ve always been able to locate the rest in the all photos tab. Fingers crossed!

Just so I understand, are these your steps?

Scenario A

1. Copy the files to the USB
2. The files are observed on the USB stick
3. Some time later, the images aren't on the USB stick

Scenario B

1. You think you have copied the files to the USB.
2. Sometime later you find the images are not on the USB as you expected?

Sorry for the confusion but you say you "dumped" them to the USB, and then sometime later they aren't there?

Hi!

It will always have been:

Photos are viewable on phone. Phone is connected with USB lead to laptop. Pictures are copied either into a folder on the laptop hard drive or into a folder on a USB stick.

Phone is disconnected. Photos on external storage are checked to be certain they are all present and correct and DEFINITELY saved.

Once fully confident, images are deleted from phone.

Several months later, photo folders on external storage (laptop hard drive or USB stick) are opened and viewed, and the majority of the photos are missing. Just a handful of random pics remain.

Thanks! Is that on phone, external hard drive or icloud?

This isn't anything to do with when My Photo Stream shut down about a year ago is it? I got emails about it at the time from Apple to make sure my photos were on iCloud.

On your phone. Wee menu bar across botyo , says “years”, “months”, “days” and “all photos”

Bottom even!

Total guess here. Are you making sure you’ve fully downloaded the photos onto your phone before “dumping” them onto the usb. Apple photos are stored in the cloud and only a thumbnail shows on your phone unless you open the photo up, then it downloads itself. If you’re transferring just the thumbnails they might disappear later. This is just a guess mind you.

Thanks for the suggestion! Hopefully bit by bit it will be possible to piece it together!

I spoke to Apple and they said if they’ve saved elsewhere they exist in that location and are not dependent on a source file located elsewhere. If phone storage is ‘optimised’, with smaller versions of the pics than on the cloud, the files should still be there, even if a smaller file size.

And it were something like this, the thumbnails are no longer there on the external location either. So still the question why do they appear to have saved, can be viewed etc, but then later have ‘self-destructed’.

Really hope to get to the bottom of it!!

I don’t think I have my photo stream

The pics/files in question are going back years, 2019, 2020 onwards, so don’t think it’s this.

Thanks for the clarification. In short,

Files that are known to be on a USB drive and laptop, seemingly disappear after a period of time.

Sounds most odd, so let's look for clues...

Is there any commonality or not between missing images on the USB and on the laptop?

For example,

• There were 1,00 images on both, but there's only 20 on both now
• Some images are on the USB but not on the laptop and vice versa

eeerrrrmm… hmm well the same thing has happened on both.

I have saved different sets of photos on each (I think) so a direct comparison may not be possible.

Something odd that I’ve noticed is that it’s often the same odds and sods sort of photos left. Screenshots, pictures of clothes for ebaying, unflattering selfies, pics of the dog. But loads of more interesting pics gone. Although it’s not a hard and fast rule. A few videos taken from a party on holiday were still intact for example, but just barely any of the photos – a handful from dozens and dozens.

How are you “dumping” them? Through the photos app (and if so, using what export commands) or by directly copying the files from the library?

And how are you viewing them once they are on your laptop of usb stick?

Do you have any photo synching with iCloud?

Copying and pasting them into folders in a different drive on my laptop.

Then disconnecting phone, checking pictures are all still there in the C (or E) drive, then and only then deleting them from phone.

I went onto icloud for the first time ever after posting here, and did find that from a certain date onwards (maybe late 2020) everything still appears to be on icloud. The cut-off date coincides with a change of phone (I always have my partners old ones as I’m not arsed about upgrading models etc.).

Still doesn’t explain why I’m not able to safely save these photos somewhere else tho. I don’t want a life long dependency on icloud!

And the photos from prior to this date (likewise copied and pasted into external storage) are still MIA. And these are the more interesting ones, as they’re not from during lockdown!

When you unplug your phone and go and check that they are there, is your laptop connected to the internet?

I’m wondering if they’re copying over the Internet via iCloud and are still actually copying when you check them (they’d open even if they aren’t fully downloaded). Then you close the laptop or disconnect it from the internet and delete the photos off your iPhone before it’s completed copying?

Might also explain why screenshots and videos are there more than other photos as smaller photos (which screenshots often are) might complete faster and videos may be prioritized.

This is just a guess though.

*or not via iCloud if laptop is a PC.

Do you pay for iCloud because if you are over the 5gb free I think photos over the limit just sit in iCloud but you can't do much with them, maybe if you are not paying for it, try and subscribe for one month and see if you can get to them and put them elsewhere if they are there.

hmm that’s interesting. Although I had never signed into icloud on my laptop, so don’t know if syncing would be possible in that case?

Laptop definitely have been connected to home wifi at the time

I’m not sure if you’d need to be connected to iCloud if you’re just copying and pasting, that’s not synching. But also don’t know if you’d be able to open them before they’ve properly copied over if it’s not done via iCloud.

How long do you usually leave it? You could try copying a month’s worth and leaving it much longer before you closed the laptop. See if you get more photos?