Help! All my photos have disappeared

[kimberleyallen]

Hi everyone, ok I will try and remember exactly what happened!

I have been travelling and bought an iPad whilst in Sydney as my iPhone was starting to play up. The 'expert' in the shop copied all my photos and music from my iPhone onto the iPad, and synced my calendars, contacts and email through mobile me. All great. I used the iPad without problem for the next week or so. Then I connected my iPhone again to transfer the new photos I had taken. Transferred without problem although it duplicated the photos that had been previously copied over. As I needed to make room on my iPhone, after checking they were all on the iPad I deleted the photos from my iPhone. All the photos were automatically organised within Events in separate dated folders and I was impressed to see that they were geo tagged as well...marvellous I thought! I then transferred some videos from my Flip Camera onto the iPad which filled the memory to capacity. So I set about deleting the duplicate photos on the iPad. No problem at first and then I noticed that some duplicate photos that I had deleted were still showing. I tried to delete them again and suddenly the iPad started a process showing 'Updating Library'. When it had finished 90% of my photos had disappeared! There was over a 1000 and now there is only 100 or so. Also the remaining folders now have numerical names rather than dates.

It is important to note that although there are only a fraction of the photos showing when you look in 'About' in Settings it shows that the memory is full which leads me to think they are still there, I just can't see them. The database must have become corrupted. None of the places that I subsequently visited had an Apple Store, just retailers, so I telephoned the support line in Australia. I was told to 'Reset' but when I asked if that might mean the photos would disappear for ever, he said it might. I asked about using a program like iSkySoft SyncPod which of course he couldn't endorse but suggested that I don't do anything until I return home and can look at it again. That is where I am up to now.

I have looked at the iPad using iSkySoft SyncPod and it is only showing my music, no photos at all. It is showing there is 6.96GB of music and 7.06GB of 'others'. When I look at the iPad through Finder the only images I can find are stills from the videos.

Can anyone help? Pleeeaasse!!!

 

[kimberleyallen]

An update: Figuring that half the problem is that the iPad is full I have moved all my music using iSkySoft SyncPod which is now showing that there is no music, photos or videos, just 'others' 7.05GB, available space now 6.9GB. However on the iPad itself it is still showing the music library although obviously none of the tracks will play. Also within General>About it is showing available space as 6.8GB and 1095 songs! Have done a hard reboot, hasn't helped on either the music or photo database. Still need help!

 

[Tim SPRACKLEN]

Wow - this is a difficult one!! I need to get my head around your problem. You may need to wait a day to get a full set of responses from Forum members - well, as you're just back from Australia, you'll be familiar with Time Zones.

OK - you're probably going to say some rude words under your breath when I say "Don't panic" but, from a onlooker's perspective, it is often the case that you do more 'damage' by over-reacting. I know what you're feeling as I did a similar thing a year ago when, by acting too quickly, I lost a whole load of work that I'd done when, had I thought more carefully I could have saved it all.

You've done all the usual 'quick fixes' like a hard reset, so there are clearly no easy solutions here, but I'm sure you'll get a whole load of suggestions over the next 24 hours. One of the Forum's most frequent posters, twerppoet, is a genius at fixing these sorts of problems so I hope he responds. He's in the US, East Coast I think, so he's probably just waking up and having his first coffee of the day.

Tim
Scotland

 

[kimberleyallen]

Hi Tim, Thanks for your response. I think I've solved it, possibly. Have found a load of images in a DCIM folder and Photo Data folder through Finder. Have copied them all over to my Mac and just going through them to see if there's anything missing. Here's hoping!

 

[Tim SPRACKLEN]

I'll be keeping my fingers crossed for you. Let us all know how you get on.

Tim
Scotland

 

[Hasty]

Well done.
The photos are stored in the dcim folders but apple gives them strange alpha numeric names and it's not easy to find them.
Just get them all transfered before you do anything else.

 

[Demandarin]

Dang, I really hope you solved the issue. As I have over 1700 photos and would be truly mad if they were lost. I've noticed also that when u have soo many photos, when it updates library, u do loose some photos sometime for some reason. If your iPad is jailbroken, Ifiles from cydia can help u out. It's way more detailed thn Finder. It's the premier and only true PC/Mac style file explorer for iPad. It shows all internal files and folders within the iPad and also allows copy/cut/paste of any file or folder format. If photos are lost on ur iPad n u know they still there, Ifiles can find them. If they got misplaced into wrong folder, u can use Ifiles to put them back in the proper folder needed so they can be seen again thru iPad native photo gallery. I think iPad photo gallery needs better organization, not just events, saved, or imported.

 

[twerppoet]

Dang, I really hope you solved the issue. As I have over 1700 photos and would be truly mad if they were lost.

Back them up online or on a computer. Now.

Any document important enough to get mad about losing is far too important to leave solely on one easily lost, stolen, or broken device.


@OP, I can think of only one thing. Go get iPhone Explorer on a computer, hook up you iPad to the computer and use explorer to copy the the entire DCIM and Photo's folder over. Then you'll just have to explore the folders and see what you can find. Or, if you have a photo app on the computer that will import folders and subfolders, you could use that to try and extract all the photos at once.

I don't hold out much hope of this working, but if the photos are still on the iPad, that's where they will be.

 

[Tulin]

Thanks. it worked. photos found and recovered!!!

i had a similar problem: my iPad2 also made my photos "vanish" from the Photo folder leaving it empty.
i then checked in Settings...General... About... Photos and it said there were 2600 photos.

My iPad does not appear in Finder on my Mac (??), only on iTunes, so using Finder was/is not an option .

I downloaded the iPhone Explorer as suggested and found the photos!!!! and was able to download them.
this has solved 2 problems: the missing photos and how to download all the photos from my iPad at once.

So thanks a million, it works!!! :thumbs:

Back them up online or on a computer. Now.

Any document important enough to get mad about losing is far too important to leave solely on one easily lost, stolen, or broken device.


@OP, I can think of only one thing. Go get iphone explorer on a computer, hook up you iPad to the computer and use explorer to copy the the entire DCIM and Photo's folder over. Then you'll just have to explore the folders and see what you can find. Or, if you have a photo app on the computer that will import folders and subfolders, you could use that to try and extract all the photos at once.

I don't hold out much hope of this working, but if the photos are still on the iPad, that's where they will be.