I lost all my photo library yesterday!

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Level 1

49 points

I lost all my photo library yesterday!

Though I would love to blame Big Slur, it's my fault. However, I have both Time Machine AND a current LaCie external backup drive. Neither of them will allow me to restore. They go automatically to my Photo app that has just a few photos. When I try to use my external hard drive it says it won't let me because it's already in Time Machine. I went to my iCloud account and it too mirrors the few photos I have on my MacBook. I tried Photo Library - nada. I went back six months - same-o-same-o. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks

MacBook Air 11″, macOS 10.15

Posted on Nov 15, 2020 11:57 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

léonie

Level 10

197,741 points

Nov 17, 2020 9:42 AM in response to Tom Perkins1

Tom Perkins1 wrote:

Oh, one more thing, crazy. I just saw where my iPhone has ALL the pics. Now I am scared that iCloud will erase that!

How have you been using iCloud Photos on your Mac and on your iPhone?

If you have been using iCloud Photos and "Optimise Storage" on your Mac, the Time Machine backup cannot contain all photos. You have to ensure, that the photos in iCloud are backed up somewhere.

You could for example download the photos from iCloud to an external volume. This can be done from your iCloud webpage at www.icloud.com . Open this link, sign in with your iCloud Apple ID, launch the Photos.app there and select large batches of photos for downloading, hover the pointer to the lower right of tDownload button to reveal the downloads options. Select to download the originals. If you just hit the downloads button you will just download the previews.

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Answer 2

Nov 15, 2020 1:36 PM in response to Tom Perkins1

How are you trying to restore.?

What you need to do is go into time machine (not with finder - open time machine) Select the date you want to restore from (before upgrade), and restore the library to a location you can use it from - preferably the system drive, but if not enough space there, then an external drive connected directly to the mac (not a network drive) formated APFS or MacOS extended, and not used for time machine.

Try opening the restored library from that location.

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Answer 3

Tom Perkins1 Author

Level 1

49 points

Nov 17, 2020 7:00 AM in response to TonyCollinet

Ahhhh, THANK YOU! I will report back. I think library is the key as I have been trying to link through the application and not the library. Also, is it normal for Time Machine to take as long as ten or more minutes before the application shows up?

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