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Older Google Photos Becoming Corrupted

By Laura Tucker
Old Google Photos Corrupted Featured

It’s easy to just snap photos of all your special memories and keep them uploaded to the cloud for safekeeping, never worrying about them. But what happens when they’re not as safe as you’d assumed? This is what some Google Photos users are experiencing, posting to Google support that their older images have become corrupted.

Also read: How to Back Up Google Photos to Your Computer

Google Photos Users Report Corrupted Photos

If you’re a Googles Photos user, you may want to go check out your older photos to ensure that they’re all intact and not corrupted. Users have reported issues on a Google support thread, obviously worried that their memories have been lost forever.

The user who started the thread reported, “Older photos in my drive have started becoming corrupted. Issue looks like a water stain with massive discoloration and data loss. Is there any way to revert this?”

Old Google Photos Corrupted Camera
Image source: Unsplash

Several photos that appear to be water stained or otherwise affected were added to the post. Twenty-six comments were added to the post, including one by the original user, who noted that most of the affected photos were from 2014.

Another user commented how “depressing” it is that family photos from 2002 on were affected. The user had tried using Google Takeout, a service that allows Google users to download their data, with the affected photos and found the same issue.

Old Google Photos Corrupted Water Damaged
Image source: Unsplash

The device the photos were accessed on doesn’t seem to matter, as another user commented that it affected Pixel 6 Pro running Android 13, Pixel 3A XL running Android 12, and a MacBook Pro running macOS Monterey 12.6. When he downloaded the original photos, the pictures didn’t show an issue.

Solutions to Regain Unaffected Photos

One Google Photos user posted corrupted baby photos and said the corruption disappears if they edit the photo. While others also reported that fix, it was noted that if you download the photos one at a time by clicking on the backup option, the original photo and “edited” photo will be downloaded.

Within a few days, users reported that the issue appeared to be fixed, but some of the affected photos disappeared completely. While attempting to re-upload them, one user noted that doing so “will count towards the same limit” because of Google’s change to how storage is counted.

Old Google Photos Corrupted App

This is a particularly troubling issue. It would be devastating to lose your photos of precious memories, such as the user who had affected baby photos. While you can certainly keep a local copy of the photos backed up, it would be time-consuming to go back and do that with all of your photos from 2002.

Nevertheless, it’s a good lesson for all of us, whether or not we’re Google Photos users. Anytime data and files are stored anywhere, regardless of whether it’s locally or in the cloud, there is always a danger of losing the files. Solid backups in different places is always a good idea. Just a year ago, it was iCloud that was having issues with photos getting deleted.

This is one reason I’ve never deleted the Google Photos option. I don’t need it, as I’m using iCloud. But it does make me feel better to know that my photos are being saved to both mediums.

Image credit: Unsplash. All screenshots by Laura Tucker.

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Laura Tucker
Laura has spent more than 20 years writing news, reviews, and op-eds, with the majority of those years as an editor as well. She has exclusively used Apple products for the past 35 years. In addition to writing and editing at MTE, she also runs the site’s sponsored review program.

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