Old pictures on 2009 MacBook stuck in iPhotos

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Level 1

9 points

Old pictures on 2009 MacBook stuck in iPhotos

I have 61,000 photos on my 2009 MacBook in iPhotos that I can no longer access. They include all photos taken or scanned from years 1960-2017. I can no longer update the OS or the iPhoto program on the MacBook. iPhotos freezes or closes after a few minutes of use on the old MacBook and I can't sync the photos to my iCloud account. I put them on an external hard drive and tried to open them with my Macbook Air, but after an hour it's only loaded 1% and the library is 450 GB and I only have 100 GB on my Air. Have I permanently lost all of my photos?

MacBook

Posted on May 22, 2021 7:30 AM

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Answer 1

Old Toad

Level 10

215,472 points

May 22, 2021 2:42 PM in response to travlrz

You can open the Photos application with the Option key held down and select the existing iPhoto library in the Open window and convert it to a Photos Library.

When you are satisfied that all of the photos in the iPhoto library have been safely migrated to the new Photos library you can delete the old iPhoto library.

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Answer 2

May 22, 2021 8:37 AM in response to travlrz

Do you know what version of iPhoto you were using last?

As a last resort, you can go into the library and get out the originals in the originals or masters folder, I forget the name at the moment.

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Answer 3

travlrz Author

Level 1

9 points

May 22, 2021 8:49 AM in response to Keith Barkley

Yes, iPhoto version 9.5.1

The late 2009 Macbook is OSX 10.9.5

I don't think I was able to update either of these.

Thanks, Keith

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Old pictures on 2009 MacBook stuck in iPhotos

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