Ask HN: Can this iPhone data be recovered? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Can this iPhone data be recovered?

23 pointsmod16 comments

My niece, I think, is learning a lesson the hard way, but I promised to do everything I could to help, and this is my last step.

Briefly:

* iPhone 7 plus, I think

* Last backed up Nov 2017

* Baby born shortly before Nov 2017

* 18 months of baby photos, not backed up

* Phone became disabled via ten password attempts

* No iTunes machine was previously "trusted"

* Phone is hers, has receipt etc

Is this recoverable without data loss? She doesn't care about the phone. She's willing to buy another phone and wait out quantum computing or some brilliant future hack. She is not willing to do a restore and lose her baby photos.

Does apple have a backdoor or a way to enable this phone? We also can't get it to connect to wifi--she attempted to up her iCloud size to allow a backup over wifi, which I thought was pretty clever for a non-technical person.

Any other ideas to recover the photos?

Thanks HN

View on HN

It should be possible to "enable" the phone again by entering the Apple ID associated with the iPhone, or by plugging it in to iTunes wether it has previously been synced with iTunes or not.

Even then, unless she remembers the passcode the storage will still be encrypted and the data will not be able to be read by iTunes or anything else.

Her best chance is to learn from this and have backups in place in the future, and try to crowdsource photos of her baby from family members.

You can also checkout https://icloud.com to see how many of her photos are backed up on icloud.

I should have mentioned that she does know the correct password. Her baby did the ten incorrect guesses. The phone says something like “disabled, please connect to iTunes.” There’s no longer an option to guess a password.

We have tried syncing it to a new computer with the Apple ID and password, to no avail

If it runs a really old version of iOS that may be possible, but even then, it is unlikely. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204306:

”If you enter the wrong passcode on an iOS device too many times, you'll be locked out and a message will say that your device is disabled. At this point, the data on your device has been erased.

[…]

If you never backed up your device before you forgot your passcode, you won't be able to save your device's data.”

* Phone became disabled via ten password attempts

does the owner have a proper passcode? was "Erase all data on this iPhone after 10 failed passcode attempts" enabled? You can contact http://www.ipadrehab.com/, but it ssounds like owner deleted all data at this point.

iPad Rehab won’t be able to do anything in this case. What they do is repair hardware damage to allow the phone to start so they can unlock it and do a backup. In this case the hardware is fine, it’s the fact that the phone doesn’t want to be unlocked.

Visit Apple store with proof of purchase of the phone. They will unlock it for you. I have done that with my old phone.

The full force of the US government couldn't get apple to unlock the iPhone of a terrorist by weakening the security of all iPhones. They ended up spending more than a million dollars for a method to break in that has since been patched. They can't unlock your phone at the genius bar.

Huh?

If you go to the Apple Store, they should be able to help you out. Like someone else mentioned, unless you had enabled the "Delete my data after 10 unsuccessful attempts" - which I'm guessing is unlikely in this scenario - then all the data should still be there.

SMH. No, you're guessing and you guessed wrong. Turning on a passcode turns on Data Protection. https://www.macworld.com/article/2029998/understanding-ios-p...

iCloud maybe a better/easier way to recover some, but not all, data.

The data gets encrypted, but its not deleted. Although I guess I was wrong in saying Apple can help - they wouldn't/can't unlock the device for you - but I'd probably still ask them what my options are.

As others have mentioned, you can plug it into a machine with iTunes installed — even if the iPhone has never synced with it, enter your Apple credentials and unlock the iPhone.

Source: I understand what you are asking and have done this several times for people.

This does not work for us. iTunes does not see the phone.

Apparently, you can still sync with iTunes even if you haven't done so before: https://smallbusiness.chron.com/happens-enter-wrong-password...

There's an option to delete all data after 10 failed password attempts. I suppose she did not enable this? But even with it, it might be possible to restore the data using recovery software: https://www.anysoftwaretools.com/iphone-erase-data-failed-pa...

Source: Google

Visit a proper Apple forum, or seek advice from a reputable repair shop.

Louis Rossmann?

iPhone Jessa?

Jessa Jones has retrieved photos from water-logged phones when Apple said it's "unrepairable" and "everything is lost." A passcode-locked phone might require more hardware hacking to reset or bypass, if it's even possible sub-megabuck$.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com