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I accidentally deleted all of my photos thinking they would remain in the iCloud. Can I retrieve them? If not, how can I retrieve from an extrernal hard drive?

How can I retrieve all my photos deleted over 30 days ago? Are they lost forever? If so, can I retrieve them from my external hard drive?



MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 10.15

Posted on Jun 9, 2020 11:23 AM

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Posted on Jun 10, 2020 12:53 AM

After 30 days the photos are automatically erased from iCloud server so can't be recovered , if you had transferred photos to an external hard drive connect the Mac to it see the article https://support.apple.com/en-in/guide/mac-help/mchl027f1d66/mac

And then import photos https://support.apple.com/guide/photos/from-storage-devices-dvds-and-more-phtae4e05c67/mac

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jun 10, 2020 12:53 AM in response to Tooconfusedforschool

After 30 days the photos are automatically erased from iCloud server so can't be recovered , if you had transferred photos to an external hard drive connect the Mac to it see the article https://support.apple.com/en-in/guide/mac-help/mchl027f1d66/mac

And then import photos https://support.apple.com/guide/photos/from-storage-devices-dvds-and-more-phtae4e05c67/mac

Jun 9, 2020 10:35 PM in response to Tooconfusedforschool

How have you been using iCloud Photos? Is "Optimise Mac Storage" enabled? Then many of your photos may only have been in iCloud and not stored on your Mac in a full resolution and your Time Machine backups will not have included all your photos in full resolution, only optimised versions. Then you cannot recover the photos from a Time Machine backup. But if you not have used Optimise Mac Storage, try to restore the Photos Library from Time Machine, if you made regular backups.


I accidentally deleted all of my photos thinking they would remain in the iCloud. Can I retrieve them? If not, how can I retrieve from an extrernal hard drive?

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