an error occurred while migrating the photo library

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Level 1

8 points

an error occurred while migrating the photo library

Hello Community,

I recently used Migration Assistant and a Time Machine back-up to move all of my content onto a new iMac. The Time Machine backup was from my older iMac running Catalina and my content was installed on the new iMac also running Catalina. There were no error messages when Migration Assistant was done. Then I updated the OS to Ventura 13.2.1. All seemed fine.

Today I tried to open Photos and had this error message:

Quit and relaunch did not fix the error. Any suggestions on how to resolve this issue would be greatly appreciated.

iMac

Posted on Mar 3, 2023 6:50 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Richard.Taylor

Level 6

17,811 points

Mar 3, 2023 7:34 AM in response to salinaser

"Optimize Mac Storage" means the full sized copies of your pictures are not stored on your Mac, but rather the Mac has screen-sized images. Maybe. So, if iCloud is not turned on right now, the images are not really available. Your iCloud.com Photos should show all your pictures intact.

First, start in Safe Mode and see if it gets fixed. Safe Mode bypasses certain potentially disruptive processes, and fixes some things. Starting in Safe Mode is different for different computers, so see this:

Start up your Mac in safe mode - Apple Support

If that doesn't work, you can start from scratch -- make a brand new Photos Library-- in Settings make your new empty Library the System Library, and turn on iCloud, and don't check "Optimize." Depending on the size of your library, it should re-populate in a few days.

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Answer 2

Mar 3, 2023 7:05 AM in response to salinaser

Are you using iCloud? If so, is "Optimize Storage" checked? Is you Photos Library kept in the Pictures Folder?

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Answer 3

salinaser Author

Level 1

8 points

Mar 3, 2023 8:05 AM in response to Richard.Taylor

In the meantime I've tried repairing the library by holding option-command while launching Photos. The repair proceeded rather quickly to 99% complete but has been stuck there for an hour. The photos library is rather large, 260 GB, so it might just take some time to complete. I'll give it some more time and if nothing happens, I'll force quit Photos and try your Safe Mode suggestion.

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