Lost all photos andcontacts on iPhone 6

stonecoldsteveaustin

Hopefully someone can help
I went to copy the photos off of my wife's iPhone so went onto iTunes
and synced to icloud which I thought I did and everything has now vanished. I went to restore phone to last backup and it has literally restored the phone with everything gone and 3 years worth of contacts!! Is there anything I can do am at my wits end!!

buglawton

Have you tried logging directly into your iCloud account from a computer in the web browser, is there anything left there? Do you ever recall making a backup of your phone to a computer using iTunes (which asks you to do this if you are about to do a resync).

I_have_spoken

Book a session at Apple Genius Bar

stonecoldsteveaustin

iCoud has nothing in it and unfortunately no back up

buglawton

Not much hope but check the iTunes backup folders on the PC. There should be separate ones for each persons iPhone. There may also be newer and older ones. Assuming that backups were made of course. There might be a chance of restoring from one of those backups if they exist.

Oh and when you say nothing in iCloud, you did check your wife's account not yours?

Strider590

From what I can make out iCloud only syncs files/etc from the time you set it up onwards. There was much swearing on my part when my GF was trying to get her photos off her iPhone and onto a Win7 laptop.

buglawton

When you connect an Apple phone to a computer, the photo library is instantly visible as if on a USB drive. iTunes not needed. Photos can by copied/pasted to computer. It's music that's really locked in.
http://www.iphonelife.com/tip/how-to-get-photos-off-iphone

There are tools the claim to be able to recover deleted iPhone photos though I'm sceptical. Ensure that there's a trial version that lets you test the function free first.
https://www.imobie.com
And the golden rule is, don't use the phone or deleted hidden stuff gets overwritten anyway.

Strider590

buglawton wrote: »

When you connect an Apple phone to a computer, the photo library is instantly visible as if on a USB drive. iTunes not needed..

Ok, that's not my experience at all, we've had drama over this with an iPhone 4s, an iPhone 5 and an iPad mini.

To get around it, I actually ended up setting up an FTP server on her laptop, giving the laptop a static IP and then had her install an FTP app from the Apple app store. Now she can sync her photos to her laptop without sending them across the internet to the other side of the planet.

This certainly seems to support my findings.
http://www.macworld.com/article/2691953/how-to-use-your-iphone-as-a-removable-hard-drive.html

buglawton

Just tried iPhone 5s and Windows 10. Plugged in, under Computer the iPhones name appeared. Click on that, see a folder called 'Internal Storage'. Photos are all there ready for copy/pasting.

On a Mac running Yosemite, open iPhoto first. Plug in phone, photos appear instantly. Can import with one click but beware, at the end the dangerous part - it asks, delete photos on phone? If you say yes by accident, all photos WILL disappear from phone - but will now be in iPhone on the Mac instead.

OP may have Windows so my previous advice might be useful.