Possible to find old sent pictures? (iPhone - story)

[polar.bear.069]

Hello - looking for a lifeline here. 10+ years ago my (now) wife was hooking up with her boss, and I saw some pictures she sent him. She had iMessage connected to her old iPad and iPhone, and I regret not saving more pictures.

So my question, is it possible to find those pictures she sent him all that time ago?

I do have multiple apple devices around the house she has used previously, but no luck there.

TIA

[edgelord1969]

I actually have a few ideas for you, i went through something similar (maybe?) to what you're going through, where one day i decided i wanted to find all of my long-time GF's nudes from her old devices and stuff, and also wanted to try to recover some old nudes she had sent me from years ago that i had stupidly not saved.

Idea #1 (this is a long-shot): Since it was 10+ years ago, there's a chance she was still backing up her iphone through itunes on a macbook (if she had one). The backup of the phone's data (including camera roll and also pics from messages) will be stored on the macbook if that was indeed the case.

Idea #2 (this is the one that actually brought me success): Image/data recovery software. This is going to sound like an ad but i swear it's not – i used software called Disk Drill, but i know there are probably a lot of similar ones out there. It can deep scan any disk (including phone storage) and attempt to recover deleted files etc. With this, i was able to at least recover the imessage thumbnails of the nudes i was looking for which was not as good as getting the full image back, but it was better than nothing.

The longer the data has been deleted (in terms of the timeframe that the device was being actively used) the lower the chance this has of working, as the deleted file's data gets overwritten with new data eventually.

Good luck