One of Apple’s latest services is the change to iCloud Drive, which transitions from its initial per-application use of cloud storage for documents, to a more traditional approach reminiscent of its original iDisk, and services like Dropbox and MediaFire.

This has been a welcomed change, and as such you might be regularly adding your files to it; however, if you do then be sure to avoid resetting your iPhone or iPad by the “Reset All Settings” feature. According to MacRumors, there is a bug in this feature that will delete your iCloud Drive files when you do this.

The Reset All Settings feature is intended to only clear your device’s settings like network and bluetooth preferences, and when you access this option, iOS specifically states “No data or media will be deleted;” however, despite this, the data in iCloud Drive is erased.

Of course the way to prevent this bug from being an issue is to simply avoid using this feature; however, if you have done it and no longer have your iCloud Drive data, then you should be able to restore your data if you have an updated Time Machine backup of a Mac that you use to access iCloud Drive.

To get this data, you will need to access the backup directly in the Finder, and not use the Time Machine interface to access it:

1. Plug in your Time Machine drive
2. Open the drive and go to the following folder:

   Backups.backupd > COMPUTER_NAME > Latest > Macintosh HD > Users > 
   YOUR_USERNAME > Library > Mobile Documents

   Note that when you are at your home folder (YOUR_USERNAME) in the backup disk, if you cannot see the Library folder than press Shift-Command-G and in the box that drops down, type “Library” and then press Return. This should open the hidden Library folder.

3. In the “Mobile Documents” directory, you should have all of your iCloud documents stored in various subdirectories, which you can browse through and remove. You can copy these from this folder to your Mac, and then be able to access them.