You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!
When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.
When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.
Hi,
I've backed my computer and external hard drive (where my Photos Library resides) to a new TimeMachine drive, but when I try to open my Photos from the TimeMachine directly I get this message:
The library opens fine on its original hard drive. Is this normal? I just want to make sure I have enough backups of my very precious photos.
Thank you!
Yes, it is normal. You cannot open Photos from Time Machine. You need to restore the Photos library and then you can open the restored library. If you don't want to overwrite your existing Photos library, restore the library to a different location, such as an external drive formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
--Rich
Yes, it is normal. You cannot open Photos from Time Machine. You need to restore the Photos library and then you can open the restored library. If you don't want to overwrite your existing Photos library, restore the library to a different location, such as an external drive formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
--Rich
Hello!
From my understanding, you are trying to open your library of photos that is backed up to a external drive via time machine. I am not 100% sure but, I think you will always run into problem trying to do this as it is a backup and not the original source. If your computer hard drive crashed and you restored this backup you should have no problems opening and restoring the library.
If you want another backup source I would recommend you check out google photos. They offer unlimited storage space for all your photos and videos for free.
Let me know if this information helps or if you have further questions!
Thanks to you both, GSTRIBS and Rich--this is very helpful (and reassuring!).
Glad we could help! If you have a moment could you signify that this has been helpful or that you question has been answered?
TimeMachine backup
