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Dear all,
I moved my 9 gig big .photoslibrary file to an external drive.
(BTW: This drive serves as a Timemachine backup drive)
I did this for freeing up diskspace on my internal drive.
When i want to open this .photolibrary with Photos, it throws up an error that it can't be opened
cause it is damaged.
I did the library repair function within Photos but no succes.
Anyone to the rescue ?
TIA !
Mac mini, macOS 11.3
No, you are correct. You cannot put a photos library onto a time machine drive.
Time machine formats the drive with permissions structures that are not compatible with a Photos library. Full requirements for an external drive for a photos library:
It must be formatted APFS or MacOS extended (journaled) (preferred for spinning drives)
It Must not be (or have been) used for time machine. (A time machine drive can be used if re-formatted)
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 stands to reason that if you want any sort of reasonable performance it should be a fast drive with a fast connection.
See
No, you are correct. You cannot put a photos library onto a time machine drive.
Time machine formats the drive with permissions structures that are not compatible with a Photos library. Full requirements for an external drive for a photos library:
It must be formatted APFS or MacOS extended (journaled) (preferred for spinning drives)
It Must not be (or have been) used for time machine. (A time machine drive can be used if re-formatted)
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 stands to reason that if you want any sort of reasonable performance it should be a fast drive with a fast connection.
See
Matti Haveri wrote:
Oh, you are still using macOS 10.14 Mojave. I presumed from your 1st post's sig that you were on macOS 11 Big Sur which changed Time Machine considerably so that info might not explain the error.
Matti, the warning about putting a Photos Library on a Time Machine volume has been in the Photos users guide at least since macOS 10.13 High Sierra and Photos 3. See: System Photo Library overview for Photos on Mac - Apple Support
WARNING: If a Photos library is located on an external drive, don’t use Time Machine to store a backup on that external drive. The permissions for your Photos library may conflict with those for the Time Machine backup.
The only difference on Big Sur is, that Photos 6 is checking actively the location of the Photos lIbrary, if it is on a supported volume. Previously Photos would let use the library on unsupported volumes and risk data loss.
AFAIK Photos library on a Big Sur Time Machine disk is not recommended, maybe even if an old-style "volume" instead a APFS "container" is used? (I have never really used TM because I use Carbon Copy Cloner).
https://www.macworld.com/article/235014/how-to-reserve-time-machine-space-on-an-apfs-drive.html
Thx for helping me, valuable info you give.
I am not at my mac currently but i am wondering if moving the .photoslibrary file back from time machine drive
to internal mac drive and then open the lib from there will solve my issue.
I'm sort of hoping you copied the library rather than moving it, so you could check it transferred successfully before deleting your working copy.
If not, then hopefully you have a backup of the library in time machine? If you do - then I would first restore the TM backup back to your internal drive.
If not - You can try copying the non working library back from the time machine drive. You may need to repair it when you get it back - hopefully that will work.
Many thx for your support.
The Time Machine drive is a seagate drive and is formatted HFS extended.
BTW: I am using a macbook air 13 inch from 2015, OSX Mojave.
Oh, you are still using macOS 10.14 Mojave. I presumed from your 1st post's sig that you were on macOS 11 Big Sur which changed Time Machine considerably so that info might not explain the error.
Your help is highly appreciated, i will try your 2 solutions.
Photos Library can't opened anymore after having moved it.
