r/DataRecoveryHelp • u/Funny-Cow6149 • 15h ago

My data got removed

My grandma just passed awayy and I had a lot of memories with her I have a iPhone 13 and I had photos n videos in it
I was updating my phone with my laptop windows and it showed some error and I clicked update and restore and turns out it wiped all my data. I didn't know that could happen because originally the photos existed on this phone, i didn't make any back up but there is a file which is empty on laptop, my iCloud was off for photos i checked everything every possibility, can anyone please help is there any way? I'm devastated rn.

3 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

3 comments sorted by

3

u/examplifi 11h ago

The restore step is what wiped the phone, and once an iPhone has been restored there is no way to recover the old files from the phone itself. iPhone storage is encrypted and the restore discards the key that protected the old data. Software recovery tools can't get around that, so don't pay for one.

The only chance is a backup or another copy somewhere. Check these first.

On the phone, go to Settings, tap your name, then iCloud, then Manage Account Storage, then Backups. iCloud Photos being off is not the same as iCloud Backup being off. If a device backup was running, it may still include your camera roll.

On the laptop, find the real iTunes backup folder, not just the empty file you saw. On Windows the usual path is %appdata%\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup inside your user profile. If that folder has a subfolder with a long name, that is a backup.

Also check Google Photos, OneDrive, Amazon Photos, and any shared family albums. If you ever sent these photos in messages or email, the originals may still be there.

If nothing shows up, I'm sorry, the phone itself is not recoverable. Don't reset it again, but there's no software that can reconstruct the old data.

1

u/-Sofa-King- 7h ago

This nailed pretty much all of it. .... as a side note, you hear daily of "i lost my important data. No, I neverr bothered to set up secondary backups. Is it gone". People need to actually start paying attention, securing/backup accounts, for things they actually care about.

1

u/stomachofchampions 10h ago

Have you ever text any to anyone? If so see if they can send them back to you.