Upgraded to iOS5, lost photos from iPhone

[tomacwhite]

Has this happened to anyone else? It seems a few users on Apples forums are having the same problem.

Updated to iOS5 on iPhone 3GS
Did the full backup restore (it ran itself etc)
All installed and up and running
Photos are not showing in Camera Roll


Can anyone help please? I am not sure what to do and there are loads of photos I want back!

Thanks!

 

[austinguy23]

Join the club. I know of several people this happened to, myself included. In my case, the restore gave me a warning message that my previous backup was corrupted. I only got part of my pics back.

 

[wild05kid05]

I have this too, pretty messed up. I suppose iTunes 10.5 ruined the backup. When I tried to manually extract with 3rd party software, it shows a list of image files, but the files are gone. I could only retrieved 10 photos out of 200

 

[netnothing]

Same happened to my wife's phone. Couldn't fix it....had to wipe the phone and start from scratch.

The scary part us wasn't the loss of the photos (I found them in the iTunes Backups manually)....the scary part was iCloud backups THOUGHT there was still 900MB in the camera roll....even though there were no pictures.

That's why I ended up starting from scratch.

-Kevin

 

[zorinlynx]

Why do people go so long without syncing photos? You realize that even if you didn't lose them because of the upgrade, your phone could get lost or stolen too, right?

Back up your stuff, and don't rely on others to back it up for you.

 

[netnothing]

Why do people go so long without syncing photos? You realize that even if you didn't lose them because of the upgrade, your phone could get lost or stolen too, right?

Back up your stuff, and don't rely on others to back it up for you.

Well, I agree. No one to blame but myself for not pulling photos off my wifes phone. We recovered them all from the iTunes backups....but our bigger problem with iOS thinking 900MB was still being used.

-Kevin

 

[ntrigue]

Tts strange because his happened to people in beta 4 and then never again. I think I recall a solution. Did you restore from backup twice?

 

[BLOND37]

Join the club. I know of several people this happened to, myself included. In my case, the restore gave me a warning message that my previous backup was corrupted. I only got part of my pics back.

lost pix here too! dunno why.. didnt get message about corrupt.. was thinking to fix deleeting all pix off phine and resync by usb?

 

[netnothing]

Tts strange because his happened to people in beta 4 and then never again. I think I recall a solution. Did you restore from backup twice?

I restored from backup twice with no luck. I could have waited to see if maybe 5.1 would fix....but since my wife doesn't have a ton of apps, I decided to spend a few hours restoring from a clean start.

-Kevin

 

[gottafly]

I've used this app in the past with decent luck.
http://photorescueapp.com/

 

[tomacwhite]

Why do people go so long without syncing photos? You realize that even if you didn't lose them because of the upgrade, your phone could get lost or stolen too, right?

Back up your stuff, and don't rely on others to back it up for you.

Whilst this is true, I expected the "iTunes Backup" to back up my photos. It's me in the wrong though! That learned me!

 

[Cascadians]

I synced my 3GS to iPhoto every day.

But when I upgraded to iOS5, it deleted all my Back-Ups!

Restored almost everything, has taken 3 days, but syncing photos from iPhoto back to iPhone results in Photo Library, not Camera Roll, and I cannot delete any photos off the Photo Library.

Trying to figure out how to transfer only the really good photos from iPhoto to my iPhone 3GS running iOS5.

Will be buying 2 4S in a week. Still want my 3GS to be set up correctly.

 

[BLOND37]

if i deleted all pix of phone and resync'ed would that help any?

 

[tomacwhite]

I managed to get my girlfriends photos back.

I downloaded a piece of software for my Mac (PC version available too) called iPhone Explorer. It basically lets you look at the root of the iPhone in all its folders, very handy.

Looked in photos folder, 100s of images, perfect!

Definitely a nasty bug in iOS5 which not only doesn't display your photos, but also tells you have have space on your iPhone when you don't, my photos section was registering 0.01gb of images when in reality it was much, much higher.

Is there a place you can feedback to Apple direct? Although I would hope they have already fixed this bug for iOS5.1

 

[lagopede]

Many thanks tomacwhite - I've got my photos back using iExplorer too.

For info if others are searching - I found them under Media/DCIM/100Apple/ - slightly random. Just copied and pasted to my laptop, easy.

Now, I wonder whether to delete them from there or not? They are taking up a lot of space, but slightly worried I'll mess something up (more than Apple has already done) by removing them.

 

[redhead468]

syncing photos

Why do people go so long without syncing photos? You realize that even if you didn't lose them because of the upgrade, your phone could get lost or stolen too, right?

Back up your stuff, and don't rely on others to back it up for you.

it is true that backing up should be a regular habit to limit loss...however, I have had trouble with iTunes even recognizing my phone half the time...the whole set up becomes more convoluted with each upgrade :-/

 

[maliu]

Be sure to download your camera roll to iPhoto. Then you aren't at the mercy of an iTunes backup.

 

[anyahan23]

I managed to get my girlfriends photos back.

I downloaded a piece of software for my Mac (PC version available too) called iPhone Explorer. It basically lets you look at the root of the iPhone in all its folders, very handy.

Looked in photos folder, 100s of images, perfect!

Definitely a nasty bug in iOS5 which not only doesn't display your photos, but also tells you have have space on your iPhone when you don't, my photos section was registering 0.01gb of images when in reality it was much, much higher.

Is there a place you can feedback to Apple direct? Although I would hope they have already fixed this bug for iOS5.1

how'd you serch for that? i have iphone explorer also and i'm trying to look for some important pictures which was not sync for the last month. pls. can anybody help me? iwant those pictures back. can anybody give me the directory to where to find the Itunes backup. pls

 

[tomacwhite]

how'd you serch for that? i have iphone explorer also and i'm trying to look for some important pictures which was not sync for the last month. pls. can anybody help me? iwant those pictures back. can anybody give me the directory to where to find the Itunes backup. pls

They were just in the photo folder. I don't have it at hand at the moment, but it was in the DCIM folder. Just have a search through the root using that iPhone Explorer application and they will (should) show up.

 

[Osaka23]

Please check out my Youtube video for a tutorial on recovering pictures and videos ONLY without software.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PC9BV-eOuk&feature=youtu.be

 

[michellejsy98]

Am in same situation

I had 2,000 pictures before updating my iPhone to iOS 6 (I think that's what it is called) and they have all disappeared. KAPOOT. I'm literally screwed if I can't get these photos back.
Any idea what I can do?

I had to restore my iPhone to its factory settings after updating it and then went to iTunes-> Preferences-> Devices and restored my phone according to the sync made an hour earlier.
I have all my messages, contacts, calendar events, reminders, and notes.

But I am missing my photos, music and apps. WHAT CAN I DO??

Plus, does anyone know where the YouTube app went???

 

[michellejsy98]

THANK YOU @tomacwhite

I managed to get my girlfriends photos back.

I downloaded a piece of software for my Mac (PC version available too) called iPhone Explorer. It basically lets you look at the root of the iPhone in all its folders, very handy.

Looked in photos folder, 100s of images, perfect!

Definitely a nasty bug in iOS5 which not only doesn't display your photos, but also tells you have have space on your iPhone when you don't, my photos section was registering 0.01gb of images when in reality it was much, much higher.

Is there a place you can feedback to Apple direct? Although I would hope they have already fixed this bug for iOS5.1

OMG THANK YOU SOOOOO MUCH - I donwnloaded iPhone Explorer free from the internet and am currently backing up 4,000 pictures!!! YOU HAVE SAVED MY LIFE (well, my social life, anyway...). THANK YOU SO MUCH - I send you virtual cookies