I recently update my IOS on my Mac Mini to Sonoma 14.3.1 and Photos to V 9.0 (630.0.150) and now I am unable to open my photos library on my external SSD drive! HELP! I have over 50,000 photos there!
[Re-Titled by Moderator]
Mac mini, macOS 14.3
And how is your SSD drive formatted? To avoid damaging the Photos Library an external drive must be formatted in either APFS format or Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format. Additionally, the drive can not have had Time Machine on it since it was formatted. The newest macOSs won't even allow a Library on a non-Mac formatted drive to open, since there is so much background activity dealing with the Photos database that opening opening the Library could damage it. See this:
Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support
If this is the problem, then one solution is to copy the Library to your internal drive, reformat the SSD and copy it back. Probably, since this has just happened and Sonoma hasn't let you use the Library, it will be OK.
If there's no room on your internal drive to do this, you may have to get another drive for the transfer. If you use iCloud, you could reformat your drive, create an new Library on it, and let Photos fill it from iCloud.
Let us know what you do and how it goes...
And how is your SSD drive formatted? To avoid damaging the Photos Library an external drive must be formatted in either APFS format or Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format. Additionally, the drive can not have had Time Machine on it since it was formatted. The newest macOSs won't even allow a Library on a non-Mac formatted drive to open, since there is so much background activity dealing with the Photos database that opening opening the Library could damage it. See this:
Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support
If this is the problem, then one solution is to copy the Library to your internal drive, reformat the SSD and copy it back. Probably, since this has just happened and Sonoma hasn't let you use the Library, it will be OK.
If there's no room on your internal drive to do this, you may have to get another drive for the transfer. If you use iCloud, you could reformat your drive, create an new Library on it, and let Photos fill it from iCloud.
Let us know what you do and how it goes...
nkou wrote:
I have the library stored on a NAS
That is your problem. A NAS is not an appropriate location for a Photos library fro two reason: First, the disk format for the NAS is not appropriate and second Photos is not designed for network access. Having the library y on an inappropriate disk format and network access can led to silent corruption and dataloss. With OS Sonoma Apple has made the app more rigorous in checking the location of the library for these reasons.
Solution: Move the library to a disk directly attached to the Mac (read USB) and formatted Mac OS X Extended, Journaled or apfs.
Also, hope that the damage to the library is not severe.
After several attempts to open the photo library I am making progress! I usually ends with the pop up window saying something like "Photos must Quit". Once I quit Photos I make sure all other apps are closed and I reboot my Mac Mini and start the process all over. I have gotten past the "The library could not be opened." message and was able to start the "Repair" process. That failed a couple of times, but it progressed further and faster each time. Finally, it made it to the "Restoring" process. That, too, failed a couple of times making more progress each time I restarted it. This morning it made it all the way to the end of the "Restoring" process and my library is open. It is missing many facial recognition photos in the "People" view. I noticed that process to be damaged earlier (before my IOS update and these new problems appeared) because I was missing obvious faces and when i tried to add them it did not work properly. Even when I typed in the proper name it either did not find them or it added them under the name I typed, but not to the original face. RIGHT NOW Photos is open and doing all kinds of processing according to the light on my external SSD drive. I hope it continues to process and not crash ("Photos must quit" message). Maybe it will eventually recoginize all of the 500+ faces I have within my 55,000 photos!
Do you still have your spinning hard drive? If so, I would copy the Library package to the other hard drive-- sometimes the copying process will fix some file indexing problems. (Seems unlikely, but it's easy.)
Almost certainly the problem is with the Library itself, but have you tried making a new User account and running Photos from there to see if you have the same problem? Another thing to try would be to make a new Library (option-open Photos) and add some pictures and see if Photos behaves normally with that Library.
You could connect to iCloud and see if pictures will upload-- you may even identify the problem files that way. iCloud costs $3/month for 200GB, and you only have to buy 1 month.
Maybe the results of these tests will lead somewhere...
There's a good chance that if you copy the library to the properly formatted drive you'll be able to open it. It may not be damaged so it can't open and the ExFAT was causing factor of the problem. It's worth a try rather than trying to find a version in Time Machine that you think is clean. in doing so you may be losing pictures newer than that date.
Time Machine expects to be alone on a disk, and so it looks like a read only volume to anything but Time Machine. My understanding is that mechanical drives are a bit better formatted as Mac OS Extended, and SSDs as APSF. In either case you can partition the drive, and put Time Machine in a separate volume on the same disk. I know that in APSF you can do this on the fly, so you can add a volume without having to erase stuff that's already there. I don't remember if you can do that in Mac OS Extended. Disk Utility should take care of you.
iCloud is a backup for when a car runs over you computer or the Library is corrupted, but not against deleting things you didn't mean too. Most of us use iCloud and Time Machine (or something like it.)
OK. I copied the Photos library from my SSD (T7 Touch) drive to both my 5 TB external drive and to my internal drive. Both copies went fairly quickly and were successful. I then reformatted my SSD, but I did not have an option to format it as an APFS drive. Instead, I chose Mac OS Extended (Journaled). That seemed to work. I then copied the Photos library back from the internal HD. That went pretty fast, too. Then I used OPTion/Command + DoubleClick to open the library on the SSD. I went through the "Repairing" fairly fast and then through the "Restoring" process and opened the Photos library. It looked and functioned as is has been. Missing "People" from the facial recognition that used to be there. And will not allow me to add more photos to the facial recognition through the info function. I figured I should just let it run for a few hours to see if it crashes (Must Quit) and if it updates any other info (Duplicates; People;...). So far it has not crashed, but it does not seem to be doing anything other than causing the SSDD activity light to flash a lot. I think I will close the library and reopen it to see what happens. Then I will let it run for several ore hours to see if it crashes or does anything else perceptible. IS THERE A PHOTO LIBRARY REPIAR FUNCTION THAT I CAN RUN SEPARATELY TO SEE IF THAT HELPS? Thanks,
Mike
Thanks Richard! I guess I am out of the woods! The last time I closed my Photos library I reopened it with OPT/COMM + Double Click and started the repair process again. I believe that was a mistake. The next time I close Photos I will open it by simply clicking the app to see what happens. I assume it will run normally. For now, I will permit the "curating" process to continue. It has not completed the facial recognition of all 500+ people and I want to add more. I think that will be the true test to see if the photo library has been fully repaired. Mike
When I upgraded from my 9-year-old iMac to my new Mac Mini I moved the photo library. The internal HD was not large enough (.5TB) to hold my photos along with everything else. I purchased a spinning external HD and was able to move the photos there after many days of processing! Then I found out the external spinning HD was too slow for proper performance within Photos. I purchased a new external SSD HD (Samsun T7) and formatted it for the Mac. This was several months ago (4-7?). Everything seemed OK with the exception that the SSD HD activity light seemed to be on or flashing all the time. I assumed it was because it was processing the library photos for facial recognition and whatever else it needs to do. I still noticed that many people were not ID'ed with the facial recognition. I was adding more manually. That is when I noticed I was having trouble manually adding people. It not finding them and added people under the new name I typed even though it was their proper name and I clicked on the image to add them. That was a few weeks ago. The last straw seemed to be AFTER I upgraded the IOS to Sonoma 14.3.1 and Photos to V 9.0. Then it had trouble even opening the Photos Library! There must be some serious corruption in that library! I hope I can repair everything and get it operating as it should!
I have the same issue for a couple of months now.
I had a working photos library and after an update I am getting an error.
I have the library stored on a NAS and have SMB access to it. I updated everything on my MacBook.
I tried everything (even repair the library per this guide) but it failed to open with a message shown below
I do not have enough free space to move it to my MacBook
My "corrupt" library seems to be getting better. I am able to open it and get past the "Restore" and the library opens. I can view all of the photos (at least I think I can view all 55,000 photos), but many of the "People" photos do not show up under a sampling of people. I assume that is where the corruption is present? Once open the library cycles through the various features and the activity light on the external SSD is very active. After a period of time (1-4 hours) when I return the following message is displayed (see screenshot). I quit Photos and restart it and it goes through the "Restore" process again. This cycle has been repeating 5-8 times over the past two days. I am not sure what else I can do other than continue with what I have been doing?
Richard - thank you for all of the great advice. I started to look at my external SSD (Samsung T7 Touch - 2TB) and see that it is formatted as an ExFAT drive! I don't know how I missed that! I currently have THREE external drives attached to my Mac Mini Pro. A 2 TB Seagate Portable for Time Machine (formatted APFS) and a 5 TB Seagate with my old photos and movies (formatted Mac OS Extended). I found that drive much too slow for accessing my 55,000 photos and moved them to the newest Samsung SSD (formatted ExFAT!). Shall I erase my 5 TB drive and try to copy my current Photos library to it? It will probably take a couple of days. Then, reformat my SSD to Mac OS Extended and copy the photos library back? Another couple of days.
Does Time Machine play a significant part in the corruption repair process? My guess is that the corruption happened more than a month ago and the recent OS/Photos upgrade must be better at detecting the corruption and exposed it to me. I currently do not backup to iCloud, but could change to that if it means I will have a better chance of recovering my photos. They are very important to me. I was trusting them to Time Machine. Valdi strategy?
Thanks,
Mike
Hi Folks! Thanks for all of the great advice! I believe my Photos library is mostly repaired now. What troubles me is HOW LONG it is taking to finish up with the entire rebuilding process that includes: "Gathering Favorites"; "Analyzing Scenes"; "Detecting Duplicates"; "Curating Best Photos"; and "Composing Layout". On 3/5/24 I started my latest REPAIR process (OPT/COMM Double-Click). It quickly processed the "Repair" process and then completed the "Restoring" process in 12 minutes (55,000 photos and 1,000 videos). Great! Then it began the whole "curating" string of processes outlined above. That has been going on non-stop for almost 3 days now! It continues to find duplicate photos and videos and adds more photos to"People and Pets". All that seems good. It would be nice to know when this may finish or if I must reboot my Mac if it will harm what has already been processed and have to start from scratch again? Any thoughts? Is there a document I can read that discusses EXACTLY WHAT PHOTOS is doing behind the scenes? I am happy to have my photos back, but I really like the facial recognition function as I have over 500 people identified there. TIA, Mike
It's OK to re-start the Mac. The process is actually pretty resilient-- until and update, You've outlined what it's doing pretty well, and it will never be through. We just accept it.
And I re-read my previous post--I'm an idiot-- it's APFS for Apple File System. Sheesh! At least I got SSD right.
What happens when you try?
After updating to Sonoma 14.3.1, unable to open photos library on external SSD drive
