library losing photos...

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Level 1

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library losing photos...

I know this is a common topic on here but the situation I'm in is a little different. I'm an Apple Personal Trainer and was just training one of our members in iPhoto. She has two different libraries, the user folder library is 68gb, the library that resides on her external is 107gb.

I opened them both and they were fine (I wasn't sure because iPhoto tends to get a little wonky with HUGE libraries). My student then unplugged the FW hdd that her 107gb library was on, without ejecting it. The message came up and everything and I used the record player analogy and explained why you couldn't do that.

Sooo, I then plugged it back in, option started iPhoto, and selected the 107gb library. it opened up with 28gb of photos only. It appears to all be fine and functional except for the lack of three quarters of the photos that were originally in it. The library itself is still 107gb. I showed the package contents and got the info for the originals folder and it was still 91gb. So the photos are there, they just aren't showing up.

I cmd-opt started iPhoto and rebuilt everything (took three hours) and it still doesn't work. Any help or advice anyone can provide would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

iMac 3.06ghz, Mac OS X (10.5.7)

Posted on Jun 9, 2010 12:47 PM

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Answer 1

LarryHN

Level 10

106,110 points

Jun 9, 2010 1:23 PM in response to JayhawkCWE

SOmetimes an improper disconnect of the external drive causes a phantom drive to be created - properly unmount and disconnect the external drive and in the finder under the GO menu ==> go to folder /Volumes -- there probably is a folder with the name of the external drive - drag it to the desktop and reconnect the external drive and restart - see if option launching iPhoto will now let you access the real library

If it does and everything is ok you can delete the folder from the desktop

LN

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Answer 2

Old Toad

Level 10

207,409 points

Jun 9, 2010 2:00 PM in response to JayhawkCWE

Another possibility for the "lost" photos could be a damaged database file if iPhoto was open when the hard drive was unplugged. If iPhoto was writing to the database file at the time it would be damaged. For this scenario backup and launch iPhoto with the Command+Option keys depressed to rebuild the library. Select the last three options.

Click to view full size

The next fix attempt would be to rebuild the library using iPhoto Library Manager as follows:

Using iPhoto Library Manager to Rebuild Your iPhoto Library

1 -Download iPhoto Library Manager and launch.

2 -Click on the Add Library button, navigate to your User/Pictures folder and select your iPhoto Library folder.

3 - Now that the library is listed in the left hand pane of iPLM, click on your library and go to the File->Rebuild Library menu option

4 - In the next window name the new library and select the location you want it to be placed.

5 - Click on the Create button.

Note: This creates a new library based on the LIbraryData.xml file in the library and will recover Events, Albums, keywords, titles and comments but not books, calendars or slideshows. The original library will be untouched for further attempts at fixing or in case the rebuilt library is not satisfactory.

OT

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