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ToddJ

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
May 23, 2008
570
27
I did something really dumb and reset my iPhone 11 Pro & then did a restore (without backing up the phone since i had reset my home screen and most of my apps popped out of their folders). However, i didnt realize that most of the photos i had taken the other day weren't showing up on all my devices. So when i restored my iPhone, those photos hadn't shown up....is there a way to try to get them back? I assume not, but thought I'd ask.
 

Shirasaki

macrumors P6
May 16, 2015
16,249
11,745
If you haven’t use your iPhone since, there is a tiny bit of chance that some software could recover some of those photos, or you could send your phone to a data recovery company and see if they could do it (usually very expensive).

If you have used it, then there is little to no chance those photos will be back, especially since iPhone encrypted all data stored on iPhone years ago.
 

NoBoMac

Moderator
Staff member
Jul 1, 2014
6,244
4,931
You're not going to recover them.

As was mentioned, the phone's storage is encrypted, and when you reset the phone, storage was re-encrypted with a brand new 256-bit random key. Old key was wiped from the device (in the Secure Enclave). So even if the storage can be scraped, need to decrypt new encryption, then analyze the results to see what might be old info and decrypt that encryption to see if a photo.

Encrypted twice + 256 bit key = not in our lifetimes.
 
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Shirasaki

macrumors P6
May 16, 2015
16,249
11,745
How would a person recover them?
They'd have to desolder the SSD, try to extract data, decrypt with the correct credential, and read the data somehow. I have no insight knowledge about this but there used to be people out there able to recover iPhone data from a water-damaged iPhone. I have no confidence that scenario applies to your use case though, and the newer iPhone is, the lower chance your data will be recovered by third-party repair shop.

TLDR, don't count on someone able to easily restore your data, especially for newer iPhone.
 

Shirasaki

macrumors P6
May 16, 2015
16,249
11,745
If your photos used to show up on all your devices, then you had iCloud Photos activated.
Yes but upload won't happen instantaneously, so there's a time gap between last upload and last few photos were taken. If during that gap he resets the phone, there is a very good chance those photos are yet to be uploaded, hence won't appear on other devices.
One major reason why Apple Store staff asks you if a recent backup is completed before doing any sort of repair.
 
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