Good morning everyone,
My mother is using an old iPhone SE with 32GB storage, which runs well except for the below problem.
Like with me, she has an iMessage conversation with my brother that stretches back many, many years.
During the summer she noticed that messages sent from my brother's iPhone had disappeared, both on her phone and on her Mac Mini (running High Sierra). She only had messages more recent than about two months.
Then yesterday she noticed that the phone and the computer only had messages younger than 26 October (last Tuesday).
No other message threads have lost messages. On no occasion has she deleted messages or changed how long messages are kept, which is set to Permanent on both phone and computer.
There is plenty of space on the iPhone, but weirdly in Settings–General–iPhone Storage it says that "0 K of 32 GB is being used". Below that information, however, the phone does list the storage used by various apps. If I manually add up the space used I see that the phone's storage is roughly half full.
The phone backs up automatically to iCloud and has done so for as long as we can remember. The last full backup to the computer was done in March this year unfortunately. The phone is also fully updated, running iOS 15. Since many years the Mac Mini SuperDupers the SSD every day.
Is it likely that the messages between my mother and my brother are gone for ever from iCloud or can they be retrieved somehow? Should I delete the message thread and hope that it gets repopulated or is there something else to try first? Would it be possible to somehow obtain messages from the Mac Mini clone?
In case it is relevant – until a few years ago the three of us had a group thread but for some reason my brother stopped being able to see messages in that thread. I suspect he's not maintaining his phone very well, for instance by backing up and updating it. Could that have any impact on how his messages are stored on my mother's phone? He and I also have a long-running message thread and neither of us has lost messages.
I would very much hope that someone can help us figure out why this repeated deletion is going on of only one message thread because my mother is very sad that the messages are gone.
Thank you in advance.
Philip
My mother is using an old iPhone SE with 32GB storage, which runs well except for the below problem.
Like with me, she has an iMessage conversation with my brother that stretches back many, many years.
During the summer she noticed that messages sent from my brother's iPhone had disappeared, both on her phone and on her Mac Mini (running High Sierra). She only had messages more recent than about two months.
Then yesterday she noticed that the phone and the computer only had messages younger than 26 October (last Tuesday).
No other message threads have lost messages. On no occasion has she deleted messages or changed how long messages are kept, which is set to Permanent on both phone and computer.
There is plenty of space on the iPhone, but weirdly in Settings–General–iPhone Storage it says that "0 K of 32 GB is being used". Below that information, however, the phone does list the storage used by various apps. If I manually add up the space used I see that the phone's storage is roughly half full.
The phone backs up automatically to iCloud and has done so for as long as we can remember. The last full backup to the computer was done in March this year unfortunately. The phone is also fully updated, running iOS 15. Since many years the Mac Mini SuperDupers the SSD every day.
Is it likely that the messages between my mother and my brother are gone for ever from iCloud or can they be retrieved somehow? Should I delete the message thread and hope that it gets repopulated or is there something else to try first? Would it be possible to somehow obtain messages from the Mac Mini clone?
In case it is relevant – until a few years ago the three of us had a group thread but for some reason my brother stopped being able to see messages in that thread. I suspect he's not maintaining his phone very well, for instance by backing up and updating it. Could that have any impact on how his messages are stored on my mother's phone? He and I also have a long-running message thread and neither of us has lost messages.
I would very much hope that someone can help us figure out why this repeated deletion is going on of only one message thread because my mother is very sad that the messages are gone.
Thank you in advance.
Philip
