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Kodyon's avatar
Kodyon
Iron Contributor
Feb 01, 2026

How to recover erased photos on iphone from my windows computer?

Alright, I'm in full panic mode. I was cleaning up my iPhone's storage and managed to permanently erase a bunch of photos I really need. I do NOT have a recent iCloud backup (I know, I know). My only...
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DeclanGray's avatar
DeclanGray
Iron Contributor
Feb 01, 2026

Now, i am sharing a method to recover erased photos on iPhone from Windows PC. This method attempts to bypass the need for a backup by directly analyzing the iPhone's raw storage as a mounted disk, which is only possible on jail broken iPhones.

Steps to recover erased photos on iPhone from Windows PC:

1. Boot your Windows PC from a Ubuntu Live USB.

2. On the jail broken iPhone, ensure OpenSSH is running and note its IP address on your Wi-Fi network.

3. In the Linux terminal, use SSH to connect to the iPhone: ssh root@[iphone-ip-address] (default password is usually alpine).

4. Use the dd command or ifuse to create a disk image of the /private/var/mobile/Media/DCIM/ folder (where photos are stored) onto your PC's temporary storage.

5. Run the forensic carving tools (scalpel -o output/ image.dd) on this disk image. These tools ignore file systems and search raw data for JPEG headers and footers, attempting to "carve out" deleted photo data from unallocated space.

 

This is a legitimate digital forensics procedure repurposed for personal use. It requires jail breaking, Linux knowledge, and command-line expertise. Success is not guaranteed as the data may be encrypted or overwritten.