iPhoto09 unable to import photos!

Welcome to the Apple Discussions.

Problem one: You are running out of disk space on your machine. You need to solve this problem first: OS X needs about 10 gigs of hard drive space for normal OS operations - things like virtual memory, temporary files and so on. Without this space your Mac will slow down as the OS hunts for space on the disk, files will be fragmented, also slowing things down, apps will crash and the risk of data corruption - that is damage to your files, photos, music - increases exponentially. Your first priority is to make more space on that HD. Nothing else can be done until you do. Purchase an external HD and move your Photos and Music to it. Both iPhoto and iTunes can run perfectly well with the Library on an external disk.

Problem Two: It’s quite likely that running on an overcrowded disk has caused damage to the Library. Once you have made space on your disk either restore from your back up or Download iPhoto Library Manager and use its rebuild function. This will create a new library based on data in the albumdata.xml file. Not everything will be brought over - no slideshows, books or calendars, for instance - but it should get all your albums and keywords back.

Because this process creates an entirely new library and leaves your old one untouched, it is non-destructive, and if you're not happy with the results you can simply return to your old one.

Regards

TD

Same thing happened to me. I am not sure what caused it but what i did was i ejected the SD card and re-inserted it again. The import worked the second time round.

Hello, I have this same error, but it could be a slightly different problem.

I import photos from an external HD +without moving them+, but in large quantities. It was able to process a stack of 15GB of pictures, but following stack was almost 45 GB (about 6,000 pictures), and I got the same error as you.
Again: I don't copy the pictures, and even though, my hard disk has 120 free GB, which would be enough if I did copy them anyway. So I am definitely not running low on disk space.

It seems to me iPhoto09 is not able to process that large amount of files. *Importing these files by smaller batches* worked for me, so far. (I am currently processing this way). I have 3GB ram, 127 GB free on HD, no other apps running.

UPDATE : one of my file had Chinese (simplified) character as a name. It cannot be imported. I renamed it to "roman" name, import successful after that. This "cannot write to disk" error can be caused (among potential other reasons) by non roman encoding in name of file.

This "cannot write to disk" error can be caused (among potential other reasons) by non roman encoding in name of file.

iPhoto should be able to handle non-Roman names without problem. You can surely rename a file in iPhoto with Chinese or import a photo from your own drive with a Chinese name, can't you? Could that photo on the other drive have had its name stored in a non-Unicode or Windows Unicode form?

I'm having this same problem, importing photos from a Canon Powershot. I want to isolate it.

- Repairing permissions doesn't help.
- I haven't tried repairing user home folder permissions from the Leopard Install DVD yet.
- I also have Kodak EasyShare installed.
- I UPGRADED the computer from 10.4 to 10.5.
- None of my photos have anything but Western characters - camera default names.
- 37GB of free HD space

After importing all the photos, iPhoto gives the error:
Error writing to disk.
iPhoto cannot import your photos because there was a problem writing the volume containing your iPhoto library.

Welcome to the Apple Discussions.

How big is your HD and how much free space on it?

Regards

TD

Ah yes, sorry. It's a 60gb with 37gb free. I'm importing about 250MB of photos.

Download iPhoto Library Manager and use its rebuild function. This will create a new library based on data in the albumdata.xml file. Not everything will be brought over - no slideshows, books or calendars, places or faces, for instance - but it should get all your albums and keywords back.

Because this process creates an entirely new library and leaves your old one untouched, it is non-destructive, and if you're not happy with the results you can simply return to your old one.

Regards

TD

Well, the current iPhoto Library is accessible... But I'll check it out...

I have the same problem. Are you using Devices in the main window to select all of the pictures (or the Import All button) you want to import? That's what I did and it would give me the same error and do nothing.

If I use the File menu "Import to Library" function and select the camera or memory card (I'm reading from the CF), it will import all of the files except for the one that was in error. When it finished it, it imported all but the one file and it gave me an improper format error and told me the exact file that was in error.

The problem obviously lies with the way the import works from the main window.

It's indeed possible that the original encoding was non-Unicode. It came from a Chinese-localized windows.
BTW, about renaming a picture in iPhoto, note that it doesn't actually rename the file itself.

Finally: I did successfully import other pictures with unicode-encoding Chinese names. So I think your explanation was right : non-Unicode or Windows unicode problem.

thanks!

Having the same problem also. My MacBook Pro is brand new (today) and I'm importing from a CF card containing RAW and JPEG files.

I was importing >400 pictures and got this error. I imported the files in 100 picture batches. Eventually, I narrowed it down to a issue with one picture that iPhoto did not like importing. Intestingly iPhoto would import the JPEG version of the picture but not the RAW version.

Checking the "hide the imported pictures already" helps narrow down the problem picture.

Couldn't figure out what was wrong with the file but maybe I'll send it to APPLE and they can figure out what in the file is causing this error.

Hi
I have the same problem you've helped others with. I've tried the solutions listed (making more HD space, rebuilding the library) , as well as ejecting my SD card, restarting the computer, repairing permissions. I still get the same error. When I retry, I can copy 1 picture over, but if I try to import several, I get the error message again.
Please help! Thanks Mitch

I have the same problem after installing iphoto 09, i usually don't like to "repair" anything when it comes to software or library of files since it can bring more problem.

This should not have happened at first place. I will wait for any update from apple.

Apple are you listening?