restoring Photos Library from Carbonite

lparnell wrote:

iMac died, and now I want to restore Photos Library to new machine. Does it need all of the files in the screenshot below?

https://discussions.apple.com/content/attachment/784fa9d6-c348-4b0c-b2b3-7e06345d1796

You should restore the entire Photos Library with all those folders shown in your snapshot.

The Photos Library is actually a special type of folder called a Package. This is a Mac-specific storage architecture and those other files show up as folders inside the Package. To understand this better, on your working computer, create a new Photos Library (one may already be there) and import several images into it. Then right-click (or control-click) on the Photos Library and select open package contents. You will then see folders with names like the ones Carbonite is showing you. The folder that has all the actual images is called Originals.

I would restore from Carbonite everything you showed in your snapshot. If you are lucky, the restored Photos Library will be the right type of MacOS Package with all the folders inside it properly placed and if that is the case, you will be able to open it in Photos with everything as it was before.

If you are not as lucky, the folders will all be restored but you won't be able to recover the Photos Library functionality. In that case, check that all your images are contained inside the Originals folder that was restored. They should be there. Then, create a new Photos Library and import that folder. That will bring all your old images into the new Photos Library. This will not restore your custom albums and other "extras" that were embedded in your old Photos Library, but it should enable you to recover all your images.

As noted by Jack19, some online or cloud storage systems don't properly keep all the structural details that are needed for Mac-specific folders/packages like the Photos Library. I think this is also true of Dropbox, for instance.

If you want to backup your Photos Library such that you can restore it and immediately use it as is, use a tool like Time Machine or a clone application like Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper. Or you can use Apple's iCloud for your photos storage.

Hi there -

Online backup services, such as Carbonite, do not properly backup and store the complex structure and permissions of Photos Library files. You can try to download all files associated with the library and attempt to open it, but it may fail. If it does, you might need to extract the original photos from within those folders, and import them manually into the Photos Library.

Then, in the future, use Time Machine to backup your Mac which will include your Photos Library: Back up your Mac with Time Machine - Apple Support. Or, you could use iCloud Photo Library: Set up and use iCloud Photos - Apple Support.

-Jack

What I had suggested was to restore the entire Photos Library and see if double clicking on it results in it opening as a working Photos Library. I think that is unlikely to work, however, because your off site cloud backup service does not preserve the proper structure of that special Library file/folder.

If it works, fine, but if not, go through the process I described earlier to locate the Originals folder. Make a copy of it and place the copy somewhere on your Desktop or in a folder, such as your Pictures folder in your Mac user account. Then open Photos holding down the Option key, it will ask you which Photos Library you wish to use; respond by creating a new empty one. Then IMPORT that Originals folder using the File => Import option in Photos.