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How can I view my photos that have gone blank? My Mac is about 7 years old and it seems that my OS El Capitan can't cope with the photos. What can I install so I can open them? Thank you
iMac 21.5″, OS X 10.11
Please read the following user tip and restate your question/problem in detail:
Writing an Effective Apple Support Communities Question - Apple Community
What year and model is your Mac?
When did you begin to have problems with your photos?
What format are the photos?
What device took the photos?
How much free space do you have on your boot drive?
Where is the library located? If on an external driver what type of drive is it, how is it formatted and how connected to your Mac?
Do you have iCloud Library enabled? If so how about "Optimize Mac Storage"?
HEIC format was added relatively recently and your software cannot handle it. You can get the free Graphic converter software, or use one of the online converters. In any case you need to convert HEIC to JPEG.
If the HEIC's are coming from your phone, you can set it to go back to JPEGS.
A lot of these 21.5” and 27” iMac models were purchased with the cheapest big storage available; with hard disk drives (HDDs).
Backups are your priority, as HDD failures can be incremental, and the more the disk is exercised, the less the data you might get back from it, if here is a HDD failure underway. (This doesn’t apply to SSDs, which tend to fail hard.)
Backups are one of the very few ways to mark data as being valuable. Data with no backups and data that can’t easily be re-created or re-generated is not valuable data. Too many folks lose too much precious data to theft/fire/dunking/dropping/failure
The more you describe this, the more it seems a corruption, or a hardware failure. HDD failures can happen incrementally, over time, with increasing effects, too. There are some other potential causes for corruptions, including some types of add-on apps; add-on security apps and add-on cleaner apps, for instance.
Once you get your backup, run Apple Diagnostics.
Use Apple Diagnostics to test your Mac - Apple Support
Next, download and run EtreCheck and share the report to the clipboard. Then open a new reply here, and press the Additional Text button that looks like a printed page. You can then paste the hardware and software configuration report here; into the Additional Text text input box.
Finally, if this is a failing HDD there is a potential option (short of replacement with iMac 24” or other Mac) that can get a few more years, and with better performance:
Why is my hard disk drive iMac so slow? - Apple Community
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Hi, almuth82, what type ( iMac, tower, portable/notebook) of mac do you have and what year was it made? You can find that info by going to “about this Mac” … and it should tell you that info plus much more. If you know the model number, either the rough version or the official version ( starts with “A”
usually) going to everymac.com and typing that into the search window will confirm your Mac’s year/date of manufacture and capabilities. As I don’t know anything about your Mac, i can’t help you much.. but, start with the basics: do a reset of the smc/PMU and zap pram 4 times on startup… see if booting up into safe mode gets you better results ( eg problem goes away) … Macs generally are usable for about 10-11 years, maybe a year more. If you have a mac pro ( tower mac) then components are easily replaceable, should they fail or show signs of doing so…. If you have an iMac or iMac pro, not so much… i’d recommend buying and using an external hard drive to use as a backup for your mac.. the backup app is built into the MacOS and is easy to use and set up ( TimeMachine) . It would be prudent and smart to do so.. just in case…
john b
You might have a failing hard disk drive.
That is a guess, and may well be a wrong guess.
What you’ve described can be a symptom of a hardware failure.
If you don’t already have complete and current backups, your first and only priority here is to ensure you have a complete backup. Not repairs. Not scans. Not tests. Not updates or upgrades. Nor re-installs. Backups. First. Foremost. Now. This given the possibility that your hard disk might be failing.
If you already do have complete and current backups, then there are more possibilities, and various of which are discussed in the other replies here. But if backups are lacking, go get those backups. Right Now.
it's an imac with a 2.8GHz Intel Core i5 Processor, Late 2015. The photos started not opening at least two years ago, but initially it was the very old photos. Now I cannot open any photos taken with my iphone 12 and before that the iphone XR, but photos taken by other people open ok. The photos are HEIC and the free space is 361 GB of 998 GB. At present the photos take up about 145 GB. The library is in Photos and the icloud is enabled, however, it doesn't seem to cync anymore with my macbook pro which is quite old as well. (2014 I think)
I am stumped. Thank you for responding.
Thank you Mr. Hoffman, will do. I have backups for my laptop but will back up immediately.
I am backing up now, the last complete one was in 2021. Thank you
Thank you very much - I will do that.
My Mac runs the El Capitan OS, I think it is too old to update to the latest OS. I can no longer see my photos or play my video clips. What can I do about that other than buying a new computer?
