iCloud Photos Bug Caused By “database corruption” On Device Storage ▉

Chance Miller, 9to5Mac:

One question many people had is how images from dates as far back as 2010 resurfaced because of this problem. After all, most people aren’t still using the same devices now as they were in 2010. Apple confirmed to me that iCloud Photos is not to be blamed for this. Instead, it all boils to the corrupt database entry that existed on the device’s file system itself.

According to Apple, the photos that did not fully delete from a user’s device were not synced to iCloud Photos. Those files were only on the device itself. However, the files could have persisted from one device to another when restoring from a backup, performing a device-to-device transfer, or when restoring from an iCloud Backup but not using iCloud Photos.

If the space on the NAND storage was flagged but never overwritten this is the kind of thing that can happen when carrying things over from one device to another. iCloud probably wasn’t involved because technically these photos probably never made it off the device.

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