You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

upgraded from catalina to bigsur (finally) photos wont open migration failed and repair is failing

I upgraded to big sur from catalina, i had a rather difficult time achieving that but its running ok and seems to be in order. However opening photos I was told it was migrating the album, I left it for a day and it seemed to have failed. My library is 800G. Ive susequantly tried opening it with catalina but that still fails and I am now trying repair again on bigsur. It runs through the first part of the process and achieves 100% then starts again and is stuck on 3%, now it could have failed or this could be the big task and it needs more time. Does anybody have any ideas? I will separate it into smaller libraries when i can get it working but at the moment I can't open it. All help welcome

iMac, OS X 10.11

Posted on Feb 4, 2022 3:21 AM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Feb 4, 2022 1:31 PM

Hi


Where is your library stored? If it is 800G I guess it may well be on an external drive. For compatibility with photos


It must be formatted APFS or MacOS extended (journaled) (preferred for spinning drives) and not case sensitive.

It Must not be (or have been) used for time machine. (A time machine drive can be used if re-formatted)

It must be able to 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.


See

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



If it is not on a compatible volume you will need to get a second external drive, format it correctly, and then copy the library on to it.

Similar questions

11 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Feb 4, 2022 1:31 PM in response to toismonts

Hi


Where is your library stored? If it is 800G I guess it may well be on an external drive. For compatibility with photos


It must be formatted APFS or MacOS extended (journaled) (preferred for spinning drives) and not case sensitive.

It Must not be (or have been) used for time machine. (A time machine drive can be used if re-formatted)

It must be able to 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.


See

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



If it is not on a compatible volume you will need to get a second external drive, format it correctly, and then copy the library on to it.

Mar 11, 2022 6:03 AM in response to Yer_Man

i had a 3 months old TM backup but that was irrelevant because it was the upgrade process that was failing, first the migration failed then the repair failed repeatedly. Even if I had restored a 1 day old backup of the library I would have had the same problem. The issue is the upgrade to bigsur needed the photo library migrated. The migration process is too weak. Thus the issue is MacOSx and google interoperability, and MacOSX not explaining the upgrade process adequately, ie if using photos when you move to Big Sur your photos library will have to be migrated. Thankfully I have everything backed up with google photos so any apple issue doesn't impact the overall integrity of my photos. Its just that ive put a ton of time into organizing the app Photos and didnt want that lost if i could help it.

Feb 7, 2022 3:51 AM in response to léonie

i have a 3 month old backup and no it wasnt syncing with icloud as i didnt have the storage space on there, but ironically just upgraded it and was about to. I do have a back onto google cloud but not in the same format i had photos all set up for with events etc . So if i have to dump it all not overly impressed just because of apples useless upgrade service , ill switch it all to google and put it down as another bad apple experience. Below is the activity mon relevan photos events i cant if its doing anything or just stopped. My guess is the migration is failing because of 1 particular file , either type or size that apple have not catered for . Do you know if there is a way of resetting the album removeing the plist or something and just rebuilding it. ? I guess i will lose all my events and config though

Feb 7, 2022 2:32 AM in response to TonyCollinet

Hi there thanks for the reply. the photos library is the in the photos folder on the boot drive in the mac, itsthe exact same file name as default never changed. It was working fine with catalina, then i upgraded to big sur and first time i tried to open photos it said migrating photo library and failed. Now its still trying to repair and after 24 hours its at 3% as i write. Like i said it did do 1 cycle and got to 99% quickly then started this cycle and stuck at 3% and still stuck 2 days later. I can see all the files in the package (show package contents) in the library Ive got still and video all of which worked before. So is there any way of rebuilding the library from the package itself or do i have to try and fix the indexing the photos app uses. ? Ive got 370GB of 2TB available on the drive that the photos file is on ...

Feb 7, 2022 3:04 AM in response to toismonts

The available storage may not be enough. When rebuilding a library Photos needs a lot of storage, sometimes equal to the size of the library. And the repair can take a very long time for a very large library. Let it run and do not interrupt it.

is your library syncing with iCloud? Do you have a backup copy of the library?

Mar 9, 2022 3:44 AM in response to toismonts

I'm still stuck stupid apple software 1tn$ company and my experience of their OS is next to useless. the library still doesn't get past 4% so my guess is it's failing to index a big file event or folder but don't know how ill ever find which one. I've got all the photos on google thankfully as simply cant trust the apple apps , photos is failing here for me and i should have reduced the size of my library into multiple libraries but you would think apple would know this and creat the app so it would suggest a solution as you use it and as the library expands. hey ho live and learn dont trust apple apps , thanks to all those who suggested solutions

Mar 11, 2022 5:46 AM in response to toismonts

Well fixed !! thought id post an update, so I watched the repairing of the library and tried multiple times and always failed at 4%. On one occasion i saw google drive failed to backup a photo at the same time as the repair library failed. So I paused the synch google drive (v55.0.3.0 intel) . I then attempted to repair the photos library again and 12 hours later voila my photos library is now back and working and thankfully all intact. What a miracle !! so some problem with google drive opening photos.db whilst the repair process was operating, you would think the repair process would lock the library not the other way round. Anyway, it now is working and I intend to reduce the size of the library files into smaller workable libraries. thanks again to all those who looked and suggested

Mar 11, 2022 10:38 AM in response to toismonts

The issue is the upgrade to bigsur needed the photo library migrated. The migration process is too weak. Thus the issue is MacOSx and google interoperability, and MacOSX not explaining the upgrade process adequately, ie if using photos when you move to Big Sur your photos library will have to be migrated.


You sure that's the issue? After all, millions of people did that migration in 2020 and since, with no such issues. And the library is updated with every new version of Photos, and there's one of those with every new version of the OS. So, nothing new there either. So I'm not at sure that this is a problem with a "weak migration" but rather an issue local to your set up. And that's why an up-to-date back up of important data is vital before any update or upgrade.

Mar 11, 2022 10:45 AM in response to Yer_Man

like i said the backup whether 1 day of or 1 months old would have made no difference. As far as i can tell after a month of trying to resolve it the problem has been resolved exactly as i have stated. Paused Google drive , Ran photo repair and voila , the first time photo repair worked in 30 attempts. There's nothing complicated about my setup. If the upgrade said migrate your photos after the upgrade , be aware that anything that may have access to the photos database like google drive, dropbox mcafee whatever may interfere with the migration - then I would have tried that earlier. Thus imo migration should lock access to the files during migration or repair to avoid this problem.

upgraded from catalina to bigsur (finally) photos wont open migration failed and repair is failing

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.