iPhoto LIbrary missing after Snow Leopard upgrade MISSING FROM TimeCapsule!

Mervyn,

Thank you for that follow up post, just so you know I do have a ticket into Apple, and I will post anything they tell me. As I stated in my orig post. its already been over the 3-5 days, and I have heard nothing yet. Which leads me to believe that #1 the person is a flake, or #2 they realized there is an issue and they dont know HOW to answer it without checking with their lawyers first. Its one thing to post in a software agreement that they are not responsible, but its another thing to actually delete files. Just a thought!

Thank you again!

But your post doesn't answer the many core queries on this issue: has SL got a problem/bug that means it corrupts iPhoto and/or TM?

Nor was it intended to. It was simply a little extra info to (hopefully) help poster JamesGII's use of recovery software.

I have no idea about a core issue with SL, TM and iPhoto. I updated with no issues, fortunately. My only contributions to the thread have been to suggests a File Recovery utility. I don't have a solution to anything.

Regards

TD

Spotlight is also non functional so I can't easily search

Something you can try:

1.) go to /UserName/Library/Preferences/com.apple.systemuiserver.plist

Drag that file to the desktop then restart the computer. You will need to reset some of your preferences; let me know if spotlight starts working after you restart. (If Spotlight starts working after you restart, move the com.apple.systemuiserver.plist from your desktop to the trash.)

2.) Look for other users on the Mac. Open System Preferences, click on Accounts and look at the Users. Someone reported earlier in this thread that they wound up with a "new" user and an "old" user after upgrading to Snow Leopard.

If you have an "old" user listed in Accounts, log into that user and Look in Pictures to see if the iPhoto library is in that folder.

Hope those suggestions help.

😉

It's clear that there is some problem, given the number of similar reports. (Also, it seems that the biggest error is the glitch somehow corrupted the Time Capsule backup of the same iPhoto Library. How does that happen?)

In any event, for those who have tickets submitted, here are my details, which you can feel free to feed into the effort to resolve the problem:

- "Box set" upgrade on a 10.4 Mac Mini resulted in a loss of the iPhoto library.
- "Family pack" upgrade on a 10.5 MacBook Pro 15" occurred without problem.
- "Family pack" upgrade on a 10.5 MacBook 13" occurred without problems.

http://www.iphotobuddy.com/

iPhoto buddy saved me. shame on Apple!

How did iPhoto Buddy "save" you? - Especially since all of the functionality of iPhotoBuddy can be achieved within iPhoto?

Regards

TD

One more example, upgraded while traveling because I understood that SL would free up space on my HD, I did not anticipate any risk to photos, knew that I have most backed up elsewhere. Now I feel an utter fool...this was an important trip to me and I have lost 1000+ photos. My HD is not smaller (in fact, space = zero?!) so I hope this means the photos are there somewhere.

Novice at this: can anyone help me understand how to find and recover the photos? A simple search on .jpg does not reveal those that would have been in the iPhoto Library. albumdata.xml was gone, too.

I, also, upgrade to Snow Leopard, happy to find that it freed up 16GB of disk space. Only after talking to a friend did I find out it should have only freed up 5GB. Then, after opening iPhoto, guess what? That extra 11GB space "were" my photos. I called Apple who said Snow Leopard would only delete iPhoto libraries stored in non-typical locations, and to wait a week while they "research". They responded and said "Only solution is data recovery". But they didn't even offer to do it for free. I'm going to try to do a data recovery but, geez. I'm high on Apple products after using PC's for twenty years but they sure don't like to take responsibility. I think they're afraid that they are not in all situations a "genius". (I'm still bitter about when they wouldn't fix my macbook pro when the original battery melted the case (this was before the battery recall). And bitter when they can't figure out why I can't use normal, buy-in-the-store blank cd anymore after they fixed my optical drive. bleh on Apple support. I do tech support for a living and it's difficult to recommend their support program for advanced issues.

I suppose shared angst is better than despair in isolation ... wondering if anyone has found a solution or whether the photos are well and truly gone.

Did not know there was a battery recall--however, my battery did expand and bend out of shape. I replaced it while travelling in Bangkok at an Apple dealer--no indication that there was a battery issue and they checked with Apple only to find they would not replace the battery because my Macbook Pro 17" was a couple of years old at the time. My case is slightly damaged due to the battery heat/expansion problem.

I want to be an Apple fan, but do not find that Apple particularly wants me to be one.

I'm seeing the same problem - many recent photos missing and not findable through the finder. Also on a Mac Mini recently upgraded to 10.6 with the iPhoto library on an external drive.

Currently running File Salvage on the external drive but things don't look good so far. Truly amazing that with this many reports there hasn't been a reply or public statement by Apple. Looks like my sister-in-law likely lost the last year of photos. Truly awful.

I too am one of the unfortunates who lost photos due to this upgrade. I too have an external hard drive that my iphoto library saves to. Here's the thing though, the format of said hard drive was NOT Mac OS Extended ( journaled ). From what I understand, Time Capsule does not save drives that are not of this format. Still doesn't explain why Snow Leopard wiped out the library in the first place, but it does explain why maybe the drive is not being backed up in Time Capsule.

Just my two cents

I just used Migration Assistant with a backup of my old MacBook from Time Capsule on my new machine, a MacBookPro running 10.6.2. Everything ok except iPhoto library, which is missing both on computer and Time Machine backup. The initial backup was made under 10.5.7. I verified the backup immediately after completion and it was ok. First really nasty incident in over 3 years of Apple for me, and after 5 months since first complaint here i'm surprised nobody at Apple bothered to post a note on this topic. Shame !!! I convinced at least 5 of my friend to switch to Mac , and now I regret it.

I just installed Mac Snow Leopard but there's no iPhoto any longer.
How do I get that back?

I uploaded Snow Leopard last week and was horrified to discover last night that like you, my iPhoto library was gone. 10 years and thousands of photos of my family, friends, father - who passed away last year, wedding, honeymoon... GONE!
I immediately plugged my Macbook into my external hard drive, to check the Time Machine back up. No such luck - there were NO iPhoto files in the latest back up. Thanks to a few glasses of red wine, I managed to get to sleep last night, then brought it in to a tech at My Mac (Melbourne) this morning. He was baffled - which is astounding, considering there are so many posts on this, since September 09! Anyway, he referred me to see a Genius Bar, to see if they could help.

Since this morning, I've managed to (mostly) sort it out myself - I SO hope I can do the same for you...As per a previous post in this thread, Time Machine won't back up the iPhoto library when iPhoto is open during a backup. GOD knows why - but it's the simple truth...On learning this, I went back and opened the Pictures folder in every backup I had. Thankfully, I didn't back up on a mega-regular basis (hardly ever - in fact!) and there was a backup from early November last year which contained the iPhoto Library - none of the other back ups did though, clearly as I normally have iPhoto open.

Anyway, I've managed to salvage most of my photos - I'm just missing some from several parties, trips, etc between November and now. Thankfully - the best of those shots were uploaded to Facebook so although I can't print them, I can still have screen res shots to look at.

Oh - and according to a friend, Apple have already fixed this issue with the latest version of Snow Leopard but although I purchased mine last week, I have the old, bug-ridden version. Thanks MyMac - good work guys!! Thanks for selling me a dud!!

If you’re reading this, chances are you’ve recently upgraded to Mac OS 10.6 and you’re upset and/or angry because your iPhoto library has disappeared. I went through the same thing a couple of weeks ago, but managed to track down an explanation and a solution. Hopefully, this will help you as well.

First, some background: I’m using a 24” iMac (2.4 GHz; 4 GB RAM) bought in 2008. I keep all my important files on external hard drives, and use Time Machine on a separate HD to back them up. I have several iPhoto libraries I use for work – all on external HDs and I use iPhoto Manager to switch between these libraries as necessary. On May 23, 2010, I upgraded to OS 10.6.3 from OS 10.5.8, disconnecting my external disks beforehand and reconnecting them after the upgrade was completed. Later, when I connected my camera for a download, iPhoto Manager gave me the message that it couldn’t locate my selected iPhoto library. I checked all my disks for this particular library (which I’d labelled iPhoto Work 2010) – nothing. I then checked Time Machine – the other libraries were backed up, but all records of iPhoto Library 2010 were gone.

I ran several diagnostic and data recovery programs on all my external disks – Diskwarrior 4.0, Data Rescue 3, R-Studio – no luck. There was no indication that any of the images or videos I saved in iPhoto Library Work 2010 even existed. The only evidence I had of the previous existence of iPhoto Work 2010 was the message from iPhoto Manager that it couldn’t locate the library on the path indicated.

I have extended AppleCare, so I called and went through increasing levels of tech support, and was promised that their engineers would look at the problem and they’d get back to me ASAP. This was the Friday before the Memorial Day weekend; by the following Wednesday, I got a call back with a possible explanation, which I’ve paraphrased below.

Apparently, my external HD may have been asleep at one point when iPhoto Library Work 2010 was saved, so the computer created an “imaginary hard drive” on its own internal disk to save the library. All subsequent saves then defaulted to this imaginary hard drive instead of my external HD – in essence, the file I thought was on the external HD was actually an alias for the real iPhoto library, which was being stored on the iMac’s hard drive. This also explained why iPhoto Library Work 2010 showed up in Time Machine, since those files likewise were saves of the alias on my external HD and not the actual library. When I installed Snow Leopard, all extraneous system files on my computer’s HD were erased, including the imaginary HD containing iPhoto Work 2010. This explains why the data recovery software found no evidence any of my photo or video files on my external HDs or Time Machine – they were never there in the first place. Instead, unbeknownst to me, they’d been saved on my computer’s hard drive, in a file wiped out during the Snow Leopard installation. If so, however, there was a possibility that doing data recovery on my iMac’s HD might get them back.

That worked! I ran the Data Rescue 3 demo on my iMac’s drive; it found my pictures and videos so I purchased the program and retrieved them. They’ve lost their original file identifiers, so I have to cull through each image and video individually, and some have been corrupted because I used the computer for a few days in the meantime, but most of them appear to be there. Most were recovered in contiguous groups, so many are still in chronological order, making it easier to recreate the original files.

Hopefully my experience will help someone else recover their iPhoto files and provide Apple with enough info to correct it.