iPhoto LIbrary missing after Snow Leopard upgrade MISSING FROM TimeCapsule!

Lost my life's work on iPhoto after installing OSX 10.6. How do I get it back APPLE??

I also have all the photos synced to my iphone so I guess even if the computer lost the pictures, maybe they would have gotten synced back from the phone? Just a thought.

No. Syncing photos to the iPhone is a one-way process in iTunes. iTunes drastically reduces the file size of each photo so it displays on the iPhone but does not use up all of the iPhones memory. Even if you used a third party recovery program to pull the data off the iPhone, the images would be too small to be useful in a library. As mentioned by many posters here, be sure you have a reliable back up of everything you don't want to lose. Hard disks fail; iPhones get stolen; software has bugs: Backup everything that is important to you and verify that the backup is valid and useable.;-)

I lost the last year from my iPhoto library as well. I went back into my Time Machine and the only library backup on my external HD is dated June 2008...which is when I got my current iMac. So it must have backed up the library once, then never again.

A year of photos...gone.

I had the same problem when upgrading from 10.4 to 10.6.

When I first opened iPhoto, it clearly saw the pictures, as it told me that I needed to upgrade the images and the thumbnails. But when I did that, I was then returned to iPhoto with 0 pictures.

When I checked the iPhoto Library in the User folder, however, I found that it was the right size (a couple gigs). By control clicking on the Library, I was able to choose Show Package Contents, where I found all the pictures in the usual places (eg, Originals folder).

I copied the Originals folder and pasted it to the desktop. I then trashed the iPhoto Library and restarted iPhoto. iPhoto asked if I wanted to create a new Library, and I said yes. Next, I merely imported all of the Originals folder into the new Library.

I only use this library for a photo display on a music serving machine, so I didn't care about the loss of any events, faces, places, etc. Your mileage may vary.

This is the third time now someone has "chastised" someone that I've seen for not "verifying" their backups. (I was the brunt of this already)

Could you please explain, in detail exactly what you mean by "verify" with step by step procedures, or a link to a KB article on how this is done? Or do you mean simply to manually and visually inspect every single file via TM that it in fact made it into the backup? Is that what you are saying we should have done? That makes no sense. Who does that? Who has TIME for that? There are 100's of thousands of files on the average system. Do you manually check every single file every so often that it is in your backup? Seriously, this is what it sounds like you are saying we should have done. And personally, that is absurd. I might as well manually burn a CD or DVD on a periodic basis of every file one at a time just to make sure. What would be the point of Backup software like TM then? Regardless, it seems some people, including myself had restored files from those backups already under Leopard, so for them to no longer be there under SL makes absolutely no sense.

I made the error of relying on TM as Apple suggests. What I should have done, was not trust Apple or TM and ALSO make hard copy backups. OF course, there is no easy way to do this off the TM drive, I guess other than making images from Disk Utility. (which technically from the way it sounds, would still not be 'verified')

I'm glad some people aren't having any problems. But some like me, not only lost an iPhoto library, we lost ALL of our backups from the TM disk from the last 14 months. After SL crashed my HD and I had to do a fresh install, now I can't see anything newer than last spring. I have another thread on it, and it doesn't look promising. If anyone knows of any data recovery tools that would be nice. (I don't mind using linux on a USB key if that works better to do the recovery)

So again, could you please elaborate on what you mean by "verify" the backup?

I encountered the same problem yesterday:

Did a TM backup of the whole drive on my MBA Rev A
Clean Install of 10.6
Used Migration assistant from TM backup
No iPhoto library, also not in the backup

iPhoto was definitely not open when doing the backup, however I also did not verify the backup as suggested in this post, relying into Apple's usually functioning technology. The only thing relating to the iPhoto library is the desktop background picture. However also the iPhoto library of the inactive account on my MBA is lost.

I assume the iPhoto libraries were not backed up at all in first place... I should have gone the old way manually copying important files. But if the whole drive is selected you should see at least a warning message, that the backup was not completed properly.

I had a feeling that might be the case. Maybe better than losing pictures completely, but not ideal. I use Time Machine hourly and, from time to time, also backup using SuperDuper to another external drive. I don't change things much - rarely take pictures. Yesterday was the first time in months. The files I do change a lot (iWorks stuff for my work), are set to my iDisk.

Have you managed to get anything back?

Did you try looking at the package contents of the iPhoto Library? See my post above.

I was hoping to follow this suggestion, but holding option down doesn't bring up this option for me... any ideas?

I called Apple today and opened an incident against Snow Leopard and the missing iPhoto library. They escalated this to their level 2 support who told me they had no record of this. Sadly, however, their support expert told me that the iPhoto library is in reality a specialized folder and should have had the photos stored within it. They were not there. He apologized and basically told me the photos were gone.

If you have not logged a problem report against Snow Leopard and got a call into Apple I would suggest that you do. They need to know how serious this is. My hats are off to their tech support guys they tried really hard to figure this out.

I have the same problem. All of my Photo's from Peru, my daughters high school graduation, Montreal, London, Paris, Budapest - our global family adventures, the biggest year of our lives gone! I've tried photo-rescue, data recovery - time machine which failed like everyone else states on this thread. Lots of tears in our family. Anyone up for a class action against Apple if they are unwilling to address this and FIX it! There has to be a low level image of these pictures somewhere - This is unconscionable what Apple has let occur What is worse, we are not getting any answers.

There has to be a low level image of these pictures somewhere

As I said earlier in this thread:

1. Stop using your Mac

2. Search the disk with a File Recovery application like File Salvage. This will list what is recoverable. You will require a purchase to actually make the recovery.

3. In all cases opt to recover the largest file size as that is most likely to be the original.

Regards

TD