Photo library disappeared from an Ext. Hard drive

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Level 1

8 points

Photo library disappeared from an Ext. Hard drive

I'm used to have the Photo library in an external USB WD hard drive. Because of loss of power in my house, it happened in the past that when I try to open Photo the system lost the connection to the library and I'm obliged to browse and tell where the library is. Last day I tried to do as usual but I realize that the library was not available anymore in the drive. Checking with Disk utility data was there, but no way to have the pictures back or repaired the library. Surfing in the internet I found a sw that allow me to scan and recover that files (luckly)...I didn't complete the process yet, but my question is that in the recovery sw I see the Photo Library as a standard folder with all the database info, metadata and the pictures files. Now my question is if I will have to rebuild my Photo library after the recovery or if somebody know that automatically MAC recognize this folder as a library and I have to simply open it with Photo to have my Photo back as before.

iMac Line (2012 and Later)

Posted on Feb 7, 2021 1:04 AM

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Answer 1

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MarcoL72 Author

Level 1

8 points

Feb 11, 2021 11:44 PM in response to Yer_Man

@Yer_man,

using this recovering tool I got the full library back to life. I had to wait several hours to have it restored, but seems everything is working properly. Now need to find a way to do some kind of automatic back up of the ext drive. It's incredible that Time Machine seems not able to handle that.

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Answer 2

Feb 7, 2021 1:36 AM in response to TonyCollinet

By the way - it looks like the drive you had the library on is formatted fat32. If so, that is not suitable for a photos library, and may well be part of the reason for the lost data.

To correctly prepare the external drive:

It must be formatted APFS or MacOS extended (journaled) (preferred for spinning drives)

It Must not be (or have been) used for time machine.

It must have the 'ignore ownership" checkbox ticked.

It should not be on a memory stick, SD or similar.

It must also not be a network drive (a direct connection is required - eg USB or Thunderbolt).

File sharing services such as iCloud Drive, Drop box, Onedrive etc are not compatible with Photos libraries.

It must also not be a network drive (a direct connection is required - eg USB or Thunderbolt). File sharing services such as iCloud Drive, Drop box, Onedrive etc are not compatible with Photos libraries.

See

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201517

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Answer 3

Feb 7, 2021 1:33 AM in response to MarcoL72

It does handle external drives, but you have to explicity tell it to include them in the backup.

Your best bet will be to restore the 2yo library from TM, then try to recover the last two years of original files, and re-import them into the library.

What version of MacOS were you running 2 years ago when the backup was taken?

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Answer 4

MarcoL72 Author

Level 1

8 points

Feb 7, 2021 1:44 AM in response to TonyCollinet

Probably you are right, but if you look in the picture that I shared the foto library in under the Mybook APFS. I'm checking all the requirements, most of them are met need to check next time that I setup the library to have "ignore...." and most probably I will change to MacOS extended instead of APFS, that I understood is more for SS (Solid State) drives. Regarding TM is glad to see that is possible to have external drive included, but right now the WD Mybook it's not excluded from the TM, but the backup didn't worked so far.

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Answer 5

léonie

Level 10

195,447 points

Feb 12, 2021 1:08 AM in response to MarcoL72

Time Machine can include properly formatted external volumes into the backup, unless it is on the exclude list. And unless it is on the Time Machine drive itself.

One thing to keep in mind - use a Time Machine volume large enough to hold more than twice the combined size of all volumes you want to backup, or it will be no joy, because Time Machine will forever be "cleaning up" and "freeing space".

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