Disabled IPad with no iCloud backup

If your iPad is disabled, or you have forgotten your iPad passcode, you’ll need to follow this process:

If you’ve forgotten the passcode on your iPad, or your iPad is disabled – Apple Support

You’ll need access to either a PC (with iTunes installed) or a Mac (with iTunes or Finder - as appropriate for the installed version of MacOS). As the iPad is disabled, all locally stored data has already been irretrievably lost. If you don’t have a preexisting iCloud or iTunes backup, you will not have the means to restore data to your iPad.

You may also need your AppleID and associated password. If these have also been forgotten, they can be recovered here:

https://iforgot.apple.com

To recover your credentials, you’ll need access to one of the following:

• Your primary email address mailbox that corresponds with your AppleID
• Any of the secondary/recovery email addresses that should be configured for your AppleID account
• Any of the trusted telephone numbers (fixed line or Cellular/Mobile) that are associated with your AppleID

Unless you AppleID account has not been fully/correctly configured, or has been seriously neglected, recovery of the AppleID and password should not be difficult.

More information about recovery of your AppleID:

If you forgot your Apple ID - Apple Support

More information about recovery of your AppleID password:

If you forgot your Apple ID password - Apple Support

When you recover access to your credentials, you would be well advised to log-in to your AppleID account from a web browser - and verify/update any email addresses and trusted telephone numbers:

https://appleid.apple.com

There is a very effective recovery strategy - common to just about every computer system there has ever been... it’s called backup - and restore.

Unless you have a backup of your important data before disaster strikes, it’s too late to consider the consequences after something unforeseen occurs.

Likewise, had you been using Photos in iCloud (perhaps you have been?), then your Photos are still safely stored in iCloud. If so, these will be accessible using your AppleID credentials from any web browser:

https://icloud.apple.com

If you aren’t using Photos in Cloud, or some other cloud service, or manually backing-up important files and data to other storage, then assigning blame to the security architecture for data loss is perhaps misplaced. Your iPad has admirably performed its security function as designed...

Attempts to enter the incorrect passcode denied access to your photos and sensitive data; repeated attempts to enter the incorrect passcode (and there have to be a lot - spread out over an extended period) caused the iPad to automatically disable access. This security feature is intended to ensure that brute-force efforts to access your data cannot result in compromise of your data. If it were easy to “extract” you data using another computer, the principal/core security features of iOS/iPadOS would have failed.

Perhaps there are two essential leaning points here.

1) If your Photos and data are important to you, it is necessary good practice to maintain a backup of critical data. You can either use the automatic capabilities provided by the Operating System, or manually backup to another storage location.

2) For any computer with a Password or Passcode, be aware that its purpose is to deny access to those that don’t not have the appropriate credentials. The security features of a robust and effective security architecture may, by design, permanently deny access to locally stored data if repeated attempts are made by unauthorised users to obtain access. In this instance, the “computer” has an encrypted file-system that is designed to inhibit unauthorised access.

I strongly recommend that you explore the possibility that you do have your Photos synchronised with iCloud. If not - and you have not taken the precaution of having a backup - I freely acknowledge that it’s a bitter lesson to learn. You’re not the first - and certainly won’t be the last to make this discovery the hard way.

To conclude, technical failure was not the cause of data loss.

Your data is encrypted “at rest”. When the iPad becomes disabled, the cryptographic keys are erased. Even if you could recover any data, being encrypted, it’s of no use to anyone.