I’m having an issue with my phone which even Apple seem confused by. Excuse the long post but I wanted to give all details. There are photos on my iPhone 5S which it doesn’t seem to recognise.
50gb are taken but it won't tell me exact taken by photos, probably around 25000 (obviously too many, I am due a cull). It shows 5.2gb free.
iTunes shows 46.34gb of “other” data which I assume is the photos.
If i check the phone through some software (e.g. Photos on a Mac) it shows photos but only 2000 approximately.
If i open the camera I can see the last photo taken in the bottom left, but if I try to look at photos through it, there are none.
In the photos app it usually shows no photos. There are two folders, Camera Roll and Recently Deleted, with zero photos in each.
Sometimes the phone starts to restore the photos in the Photos app. I don’t know what makes it start the process but when it does, it creates extra folders as it’s going along (Selfies, My Photo Stream, Screenshots etc) and starts to put photos in them before it gets a certain way through, crashes and goes back to the home screen (currently the crashing point is around 5000 photo in the Camera Roll folder).
As of right now, it seems to not want to start that process at all.
When it is restoring in Photos, if I open the camera and click on the most recent photo it will then let me scroll through photos. Not all of themas it seems linked to how many are restored but they are there. It stops that when Photo app crashes.
This is now an ongoing cycle that I can’t break. Using iFunBox, i can see that all photos etc are still on my phone and my iPad is showing photos in the Photo Stream from my phone.
I had thought the phone was struggling for space and I’ve now deleted all non-essential apps, removed email accounts etc but it has made no difference. But besides, the 46gb is already taken up with the photos so would that matter?
I restarted the phone last night and it went to the white Apple screen so I had to put it into recovery and iTunes updated the software so that is up to date. Since that, I notice it’s restoring photos in a different order before it fails.
There is history of this. The phone crashed a few months ago and I had the same issue. That time it had been warning of low memory, refusing to take photos etc but this time there was no warning aside form some sluggishness. It suddenly started going to the white Apple screen but on it’s own, it would go back to the home screen, I didn’t restore it last time as my last backup was a few weeks old and i didn’t want to lose photos but I was eventually able to fix the issue. After many attempts I was able to restart into recovery mode, update software, restart etc and having played with some settings with unsure Apple Support people, the photos eventually restored. It was more by luck i think but i had thought it was linked to iCloud when I turned on the Photo Stream like magic the photos restored fully. Now i’m I’m not so sure because the settings haven’t changed. It’s set to upload to the Photo Stream but not to upload the entire library and I wondered about turning that on too but I get a message about restoring the phone from iCloud so I’m not so sure it’s a good idea (see below).
After the last crash, I had intended to backup the phone but waited as I was having some random issues:
Text messages didn’t give the sender’s name in the notification but they did show in the Messages (the people are contacts).
Some email accounts had lost passwords and it would’t accept them when i re-entered them. I know at least one was definitely right as I used it for webmail but the phone refused it.
I was getting a weekly message that the phone wasn’t backed up when it had been linked to iCloud (photos are part of that).
iCloud shows space has been taken from an backup but it also doesn’t seem to show the backup and says the phone has never been backed up.
The odd few photos were showing a white box in preview but did display when opened (that wasn’t a problem)
I had been intending to fix those issues, delete some photos and then back up the phone ready for my phone upgrade. Now i want to preserve the photos (but I can’t do that through approved software as it doesn’t show the right number of photos) so I can transfer them to the new phone.
I’m not sure what to do. Nobody seems to know about this issue, or understand it, and I can’t see anything online.
I need to make the Photo app go through the restore process without crashing so all the photos reappear (and then I can cull them, fix above random issues and back up before I transfer to a new phone). I wonder if it would help to delete a load of photos before that (something tells me that the number of photos is an issue but until I can access them I can’t reduce them - for example, I know there are a lot in Recently Deleted that can go and loads in the camera roll) and if so, can anyone recommend secure software? (I’m a bit weird about trusting data to any software/app and so I’m conscious of deleting photos and them not appearing in my Mac’s trash!). iFunBox doesn’t show where the photos go after deletion and besides, it is also crashing most times I look at photos with it.
I possibly need to upload all to iCloud (although i am trying to avoid that) but not sure if it’s safe because of the restore message and the fact it seems to think there would be nothing to restore.
Does anyone know anything about this? It’s the weirdest thing and difficult to explain so I hope this makes sense. Last time i was worried I had lost the photos but this time I know they’re there just that the phone can’t get to them - very frustrating and so close to my contact expiring and getting a new phone.
Help!
50gb are taken but it won't tell me exact taken by photos, probably around 25000 (obviously too many, I am due a cull). It shows 5.2gb free.
iTunes shows 46.34gb of “other” data which I assume is the photos.
If i check the phone through some software (e.g. Photos on a Mac) it shows photos but only 2000 approximately.
If i open the camera I can see the last photo taken in the bottom left, but if I try to look at photos through it, there are none.
In the photos app it usually shows no photos. There are two folders, Camera Roll and Recently Deleted, with zero photos in each.
Sometimes the phone starts to restore the photos in the Photos app. I don’t know what makes it start the process but when it does, it creates extra folders as it’s going along (Selfies, My Photo Stream, Screenshots etc) and starts to put photos in them before it gets a certain way through, crashes and goes back to the home screen (currently the crashing point is around 5000 photo in the Camera Roll folder).
As of right now, it seems to not want to start that process at all.
When it is restoring in Photos, if I open the camera and click on the most recent photo it will then let me scroll through photos. Not all of themas it seems linked to how many are restored but they are there. It stops that when Photo app crashes.
This is now an ongoing cycle that I can’t break. Using iFunBox, i can see that all photos etc are still on my phone and my iPad is showing photos in the Photo Stream from my phone.
I had thought the phone was struggling for space and I’ve now deleted all non-essential apps, removed email accounts etc but it has made no difference. But besides, the 46gb is already taken up with the photos so would that matter?
I restarted the phone last night and it went to the white Apple screen so I had to put it into recovery and iTunes updated the software so that is up to date. Since that, I notice it’s restoring photos in a different order before it fails.
There is history of this. The phone crashed a few months ago and I had the same issue. That time it had been warning of low memory, refusing to take photos etc but this time there was no warning aside form some sluggishness. It suddenly started going to the white Apple screen but on it’s own, it would go back to the home screen, I didn’t restore it last time as my last backup was a few weeks old and i didn’t want to lose photos but I was eventually able to fix the issue. After many attempts I was able to restart into recovery mode, update software, restart etc and having played with some settings with unsure Apple Support people, the photos eventually restored. It was more by luck i think but i had thought it was linked to iCloud when I turned on the Photo Stream like magic the photos restored fully. Now i’m I’m not so sure because the settings haven’t changed. It’s set to upload to the Photo Stream but not to upload the entire library and I wondered about turning that on too but I get a message about restoring the phone from iCloud so I’m not so sure it’s a good idea (see below).
After the last crash, I had intended to backup the phone but waited as I was having some random issues:
Text messages didn’t give the sender’s name in the notification but they did show in the Messages (the people are contacts).
Some email accounts had lost passwords and it would’t accept them when i re-entered them. I know at least one was definitely right as I used it for webmail but the phone refused it.
I was getting a weekly message that the phone wasn’t backed up when it had been linked to iCloud (photos are part of that).
iCloud shows space has been taken from an backup but it also doesn’t seem to show the backup and says the phone has never been backed up.
The odd few photos were showing a white box in preview but did display when opened (that wasn’t a problem)
I had been intending to fix those issues, delete some photos and then back up the phone ready for my phone upgrade. Now i want to preserve the photos (but I can’t do that through approved software as it doesn’t show the right number of photos) so I can transfer them to the new phone.
I’m not sure what to do. Nobody seems to know about this issue, or understand it, and I can’t see anything online.
I need to make the Photo app go through the restore process without crashing so all the photos reappear (and then I can cull them, fix above random issues and back up before I transfer to a new phone). I wonder if it would help to delete a load of photos before that (something tells me that the number of photos is an issue but until I can access them I can’t reduce them - for example, I know there are a lot in Recently Deleted that can go and loads in the camera roll) and if so, can anyone recommend secure software? (I’m a bit weird about trusting data to any software/app and so I’m conscious of deleting photos and them not appearing in my Mac’s trash!). iFunBox doesn’t show where the photos go after deletion and besides, it is also crashing most times I look at photos with it.
I possibly need to upload all to iCloud (although i am trying to avoid that) but not sure if it’s safe because of the restore message and the fact it seems to think there would be nothing to restore.
Does anyone know anything about this? It’s the weirdest thing and difficult to explain so I hope this makes sense. Last time i was worried I had lost the photos but this time I know they’re there just that the phone can’t get to them - very frustrating and so close to my contact expiring and getting a new phone.
Help!
