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Pointing to a new Photo library

Just got a new M1 Mac mini. I Have been using a 2009 iMac and have quite a few photos and videos. I have an external hard drive with all my user files including my Photos folder from the iMac. Opening Photos application on the mini with the option key held down allows me to select another Photos library. I selected the Photos library on the external drive (not the old iPhotos library) and it came up with a window telling me that it was converting the photos or updating them or something. I left, came back and the conversion was done. I opened the Photos application on the Mini and it says all of my pictures and videos are there. My folders with vacations are "there". My videos are "there". Looking at the preference panel for Photos shows the finder path to the external drive's Photos. The only problem is that the pictures are blank. No image. I can click on an image and it too is blank. If I do a "get info" on the blank image it tells me the camera used, the date, the file size and all the other meta data. Photos application says that it is there BUT THERE IS NOTHING TO SEE. Nothing on any of my thousands of pictures.

I don't know if this is an incompatibility issue with old Mac files, a hardware issue with the M1 (probably not), or me just making a mistake in pointing to a different Photos library. Any help would be appreciated.


Mac mini, macOS 11.4

Posted on Aug 14, 2021 3:07 PM

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Posted on Aug 16, 2021 1:04 PM

That makes sense 🙂. OK - if you can't set ignore ownership, there is somthing about the drive that makes the permissions structure incompatible. However I suspect that you can, but it is greyed out because you haven't unlocked the padlock with your account password. (See bottom right of the screenshot). Please unlock, then set ignore ownership just to check.


I have to say - I'm running out of ideas to check for. The only other thing I can think of - the drive is not formatted as "case sensitive" is it?




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Aug 16, 2021 1:04 PM in response to Carl Jerris

That makes sense 🙂. OK - if you can't set ignore ownership, there is somthing about the drive that makes the permissions structure incompatible. However I suspect that you can, but it is greyed out because you haven't unlocked the padlock with your account password. (See bottom right of the screenshot). Please unlock, then set ignore ownership just to check.


I have to say - I'm running out of ideas to check for. The only other thing I can think of - the drive is not formatted as "case sensitive" is it?




Aug 14, 2021 3:43 PM in response to Carl Jerris

Hi


First - do you still have your old iMac? Is all the data still on it.


What format is the external drive? (select it in finder and hit CMD-i - see screenshot. How did the library get to your external drive?


What happens if you try to open one of the blank images for editing (Select, and hit "enter)

What happens if you try to export one (select, then file>export)


Do (or especially did) you use iCloud photos on your old mac. If so, was "optimise mac storage" selected.


How do you (did you) backup your mac. Do you have (eg) a time machine backup of your old mac?

Aug 15, 2021 4:03 PM in response to Carl Jerris

Somehow the master files don't seem to have travelled with the library. You can check this by opening the library (right click and show package contents, then see how many files are in the originals subfolder (select it and CMD-i) (DO NOT CHANGE ANYTHING INSIDE THE LIBRARY PACKAGE). How does the number compare with the number of images that should be in the library.


Then

Open photos preferences


Is the circled option selected? You really need to check this on the old mac also - if you still have a copy of the library that hasn't been upgraded.


Aug 16, 2021 11:54 AM in response to TonyCollinet

Backup drive means it is the external drive used to back up all of my files. I do not use Time Machine. I use Carbon Copy Cloner for backing up the iMac. It preserves the files and structures of the internal hard drive and If I choose to boot from that drive Everything is as it was on the internal drive. Files, folders, position on the desktop, etc. The effect is like sharing the iMac's internal drive on a network except I just unplug the external from the iMac and plug it into the Mini.


When I looked at ownership and privileges it says I can read and write to the external. The option of "Ignore ownership on this volume" It is grayed out.


Sorry for the confusion. By pointing I meant selecting the library on the external drive to use for Photos when I option/clicked on Photos on the mini. (please see the attached image of the external drive's "Pictures" folder). Over the last 20 years and the various Macs I have had stuff appears in the Pictures folder that I did not put there. The iPhotos library was "converted" to a Photos library when Photos appeared in an update of my operating system years ago. So, yes, I do have lots of other stuff in the folder that contains the Photos library. Where and why it is there I don't know.

Aug 15, 2021 2:42 PM in response to TonyCollinet

Hi Tony,

Thanks for taking an interest.

• The drive hooked up to the new mini is a backup drive. Over the years I have learned that, for what ever reason, dealing with pictures and movies on my various Macs has told me "Don't mess with the original files if avoidable". All of my pics are on the iMac and 2 other drives.

• The external/backup drive is Mac OS extended Journaled for compatibility with the 2009 iMac (which has 10.11.4 High Sierra)

• Trying to open an image or print it with the min just gives me a blank page

• Trying to edit the image gives me an error message

• Trying to export an image gives me an error message that the file could not be prepared for export

• I never used iCloud or any other cloud services on my iMac.

• Backups on the iMac are done with Carbon Copy Clone. I have been using it since it came out (long before Time Machine) and it never let me down. It is a bootable clone on my iMac.


After posting my issue on these forums yesterday I had the idea of trying to import an image from to Photos on the mini and a curious thing happened. I got a dialog box telling me that the image I was trying to import was already in the library (that's where I got it from) and it presented me with the two images to compare and see if I wanted to swap! So the computer seems to be able to see the image and present it if only in a very limited form.

Aug 15, 2021 2:55 PM in response to Carl Jerris

Hi


This suggests to me that photos can't find the master files.


With that library, were you using a managed, or reference library? (Managed means that photos were copied into the library, referenced means they were left where they were on the drive, and the database just kept links to the location of the file on the drive.


I suspect you were using referenced, and since the move, photos doesn't know where to find the masters. This is why it tells you the file is already imported. All the data is in the database - but the link to the file is broken. The bad news is it is not easy to recover with photos. It doesn't have the necessary tools for re-making the links.


If I am correct, and If you still have the old mac, you may be better off consolidating the library on that machine (means copying the images into the library), and then migrating that library to the new mac.

Aug 15, 2021 3:30 PM in response to TonyCollinet

I do still have the old Mac. I have been using it while trying to migrate to the Mini (9 days old to me).

There was a time before iPhotos and Photo when I just had images stored on an internal drive. When iPhoto came out I imported all those images into iPhoto. Then Apple went to Photos and the migration from iPhoto to Photos required a conversion but it worked for many years and has not given me any issues. All of my images are in a Photos library which was cloned to an external drive. When I boot from that external drive Photos works as usual. When I hooked that cloned external up to the Mini I pointed Photos to use the library named "Photos Library" on the external it went through a conversion/updating process and left me where I am now.

How else would I migrate the Photos Library on the external to the Mini?

Aug 16, 2021 9:05 AM in response to TonyCollinet

Thanks for your help so far Tony. Here is what I have found.

The preferences for the iMac's pictures has the importing function selected as you showed above. This was done when iPhoto was updated to Photos years ago.

My iMac has 2 folders for pictures. One for the old iPhoto and one for the updated Photos. I checked as you suggested the package contents folders of both the iPhoto and Photos folders. The Photos folder shows a correct size in the Masters folder. I did not change anything in either folder. Just checked size.

I did not so any check for the number of files in either folder. Just the size of the folders.

Were you suggesting opening the Masters folder?


Also, I am trying to keep the additional files and folders that are on the iMac and all the modifications to the images as well. Except for the lack of the actual image, this seemed to be no problem with the first pointing at the external drive's Photos folder keeping all the albums, dates, places, etc. But then I notices something curious. Before wiping the external drive and re-cloning the iMac's Pictures contents, I noticed that closing and re-opening the Photos application on the mini lost some of the files and folders that were there when I first pointed to that external drive's Photo's folder. It's like some connections are being lost to the external.

Aug 16, 2021 10:05 AM in response to Carl Jerris

CMD-i with the folder selected should show you the size and the number of contained items. Howveer if the size makes sense it is unlikely there will be no images in there.


I've just re-read the thread. To check, you say the external drive is also a backup drive. Do you mean it is used for time machine? Because you cannot store a photos library on a drive also used for time machine.


As a double check, are you able to check the "ignore ownership" check box for the external drive.


Your last paragraph has just confused me🙂. By photos folder, do you mean photos library. Or do you have a folder which holds the library and other itmes? What exactly do you mean by "pointing"?

Aug 16, 2021 1:20 PM in response to TonyCollinet

I think you may have hit the answer. When I tried to do the ignore permissions I must not have done it correctly because now when I select the Photos library on the external the progress bar on the "updating library" is going MUCH slower.

I will let you know how it goes. It is just churning away but the last time I tried doing this it finished in a few minutes.

Aug 17, 2021 12:38 AM in response to Carl Jerris

Well that is interesting. Thanks for the feedback.


Hi Carl


Do you mean setting the checkbox solved the problem?


If so that is new info. I've always understood that you need a format where this CAN be selected (ie it is a test for a compatible format) but it wasn't necessary to actually set it. If you needed to set it to solve the issue, that'll change what I tell people in future, so thanks for the update.


And you are welcome - really glad we got to the bottom of it.

Pointing to a new Photo library

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