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loyle Author

Level 1

18 points

Newer Photos/ Folders missing from photos library

hope someone can help.

first of all I have a iMac (24-inch, Early 2009)

Latest compatible operating system: OS X El Capitan 10.11.6

Tech Specs: iMac (24-inch, Early 2009)

I don’t believe my question would matter but this is driving me nuts. I only have 2gb of space so all the latest jpg & .MOV I want to find and back them up on a external drive to free up some space. This is 2021 and when I checked in the Pictures/photo library /show package content(after right-clicking)/masters.

The only thing is that the folders only go up to 2019. I’ve taken so many photos since then and when I open photos I don’t see any folders for 2020 or 2021.

l open photos,c ommand I on one of the photos just to see if I do a search on my hard drive (ex. IMG_5555.MOV) and in the search………NOTHING!!!

I am trying to find all the .MOV files to put them on an external but can’t find them. 2022 is coming up. Where are those folders going to be.

I also have two external back ups connected to my iMac (which is what I’m putting my newer photos on so I can get more space on my Mac. I don’t believe that they would be backed up on there where all the other years are on my Mac?

Please if any can help

thank you

iMac, OS X 10.11

Posted on Nov 19, 2021 5:05 AM

Top-ranking reply

Yer_Man

Level 10

163,806 points

Posted on Nov 19, 2021 5:53 AM

I only have 2gb of space so all the latest jpg & .MOV I want to find and back them up on a external drive to free up some space.

This is moving deckchairs on the Titanic.

Mac OS needs about 10 gigs of hard drive space for normal OS operations - things like virtual memory, temporary files and so on.

Without this space your Mac will slow down as the OS hunts for space on the disk, files will be fragmented, also slowing things down, apps will crash and the risk of data corruption - that is damage to your files, photos, music - increases exponentially.

Your first priority is to make more space on that HD. Nothing else can be done until you do.

Purchase an external HD and move your Photos and Music to it. Both iPhoto and iTunes can run perfectly well with the Library on an external disk.

The internal structure of the Photos library changed a couple of years ago. As it's not designed for user access it makes no difference. The correct thing to do is export the items from the Library. Anything else would corrupt it.

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Newer Photos/ Folders missing from photos library

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