Son lost pictures after syncing/restoring iPhone? Any help?

[Carolyn Eagle]

Hi - our son "restored or synced ?" his iPhone in July. He lost all of his April, May, and June (senior year) pictures. He has taken many pictures since then. Within an hour of his "restoring/syncing" his phone - we went to an Apple store to ask what we could do to get his pictures. They didn't know nor did they advise him to take more. I have not given up on "finding" the pictures. Any help you can give us will be greatly appreciated. I think his phone is an iPhone 4

Sincerely, Carolyn Eagle

 

[Kriss]

Hi. I'm gonna take a shot at this since no one has responded though there are probably much more experienced people here who can help you. The first and easiest thing to try would be to hook the iPhone up to iTunes to your computer and do a "restore from backup". Hopefully all those photos will be stored on the computer in the backup file made when last syncing the iPhone. Good luck with that.

 

[VOLS34]

If you're not sure what he did then we definitely don't. Did he not do a backup first? Did he just randomly sync for no reason? Maybe they're in pictures file on the pc he performed the sync or whatever on.

 

[Europa]

Turning on iCloud backups will prevent this. It backs up automatically every day. It's the easiest way to ensure that your pictures will always be safe if the phone is lost, stolen or accidentally restored. I highly recommend turning this feature on. However, if you don't want to do that for some reason, there are alternatives: you can sync and back up with iTunes on the computer, set up Photo Stream so the pictures are automatically sent to all other Photo Stream-enabled devices when connected to WiFi, or you can directly sync/transfer the pictures to the computer every so often.

Unfortunately, if he wasn't using one of these methods, the pictures are gone for good. If he did have iCloud backups turned on, he just needs to apply the last backup that was made prior to the restore.

 

[Carolyn Eagle]

Hi - our son "restored or synced ?" his iPhone in July. He lost all of his April, May, and June (senior year) pictures. He has taken many pictures since then. Within an hour of his "restoring/syncing" his phone - we went to an Apple store to ask what we could do to get his pictures. They didn't know nor did they advise him to take more. I have not given up on "finding" the pictures. Any help you can give us will be greatly appreciated. I think his phone is an iPhone 4

Sincerely, Carolyn Eagle

I am not sure if you got my thank you. If not, thank you for responding. I really appreciate it. I have copied your note and sent it to my son who is at college. I am hoping it will work. Any other tips are welcome/wanted. Sincerely, Carolyn Eagle

 

[Carolyn Eagle]

If you're not sure what he did then we definitely don't. Did he not do a backup first? Did he just randomly sync for no reason? Maybe they're in pictures file on the pc he performed the sync or whatever on.

I am not sure if you got my other reply. I just said thank you very much. I am not sure where to look - any tips are welcome. I really appreciate your taking the time to respond. Sincerely, Carolyn Eagle

 

[Kriss]

You're welcome. Good luck.

 

[Carolyn Eagle]

Turning on iCloud backups will prevent this. It backs up automatically every day. It's the easiest way to ensure that your pictures will always be safe if the phone is lost, stolen or accidentally restored. I highly recommend turning this feature on. However, if you don't want to do that for some reason, there are alternatives: you can sync and back up with iTunes on the computer, set up Photo Stream so the pictures are automatically sent to all other Photo Stream-enabled devices when connected to WiFi, or you can directly sync/transfer the pictures to the computer every so often.

Unfortunately, if he wasn't using one of these methods, the pictures are gone for good. If he did have iCloud backups turned on, he just needs to apply the last backup that was made prior to the restore.

I doubt very much if he was using iCloud. If you ever think of another way we might find the pictures, we welcome your input. Thank you very much - Sincerely, Carolyn Eagle

 

[Europa]

Yep, I got it. You're welcome.

Let me know if you have any other questions. Hopefully, he has a backup.

 

[VOLS34]

You can also upload pics to your pc & store them in a folder if you don't trust a backup.