Recovering photos from macOS Catalina with deleted Time Machine backup storage

I think I understand that you can see the Photos Library in the Mac, it takes up enough space that you're sure there's stuff there, but the Photos app won't show it-- is that right? I'm not sure what you mean about "file pathway."

If that's right, then the first thing you must do is make a copy of that Photos Library-- dragging it to another disk drive is best, but you can also option-drag the Library to another folder-- if you have the room on your internal drive to them both.

If you're convinced that this Library has a corrupted database and Photos has lost the connections to the picture files, then the best thing to do is to open the Library "Package" and get the contents. This about guarantees that the Library will not work with Photos again, but you can get the original pictures, although they won't have the edits and comments.

The Library is a "package," a folder that is slightly protected-- it takes an extra step to open it and look inside. You can open a Library package by right-clicking the Library and choosing Show Library Contents. The insides might look like this:

The folders might be different depending on the Operating System, and there may be extra folders and files--this is from Tahoe, but it should look similar in Catalina. The Originals and Resources folders have had different names in different OSs, but they should be the two largest folders.

The "Originals" folder has the original picture files in a bunch of awkwardly named folders, but the pictures' names have all been changed. Since in a Library import there might be several pictures named IMG_0123, for instance, all the file names have been changed to a 128 bit name like 39B2CD17-CDCF-4412-823F-6D48938D3D0E.jpg  This is a  GUID, a 128 bit global unique identifier. With 128 bits, there are 10³⁸ different possible names, so a random number generator is very very very (38 verys) unlikely to produce a duplicate name. Pretty cool.

So, you can retrieve all your Original Unmodified picture files, but you may have a time trying to get them into order. The metadata should be intact, though, so the dates will help a lot. But the dates in Finder are file dates, so they may mix up capture dates. 

Putting all the originals into another Photos Library is a pretty good way to work with them. I just tried this, and I imported the pictures from an Originals folder into a new Photos Library, and Photos correctly interpreted the capture date from the pictures' metadata. So pictures of similar events occurred together. So there may be no problem in not having original file dates.

To make a new Library for the Mac, close Photos, option click the Photos icon, and choose Create New from the Library Chooser dialog. You can then specify an external drive as the location, if that's what you need.

You can use this dialog to switch between Libraries, or you can just double click on a Library to open it in Photos.

The Recources folder has Thumbnails and preview copies, all lower resolution than the originals. But if you did have some edits, these might show a bit of what was done. These do not have the comments, keywords, captions or titles that may have been added. 

Well, that's a lot. Tell us how it goes, and let us know if you have more questions…

Oh.

It's beginning to sound like you have a Referenced Library. Normally, the original picture files are copied into the Photos Library, so everything is in one place--a Managed Library. Sometimes, unfortunately, a Library is set up so that the original picture files are just hanging around someplace, and Photo has to go looking for them. That's a Referenced Library, and that can run into trouble. If that's the case, then you would have to get to those original pictures since they're not in the Library. There are some tools in Photos that might help you decide what to do.

In Tahoe Photos, there is a menu item for this when you select a Referenced picture:

"File>Show Referenced File in Finder." But I kind of doubt that was there in Catalina.

Below that is the command "Consolidate" which is used to bring the original referenced files into the Photos Library. I don't quite get if you can find files on the Time Capsule, but if you can see those picture files, then you might be able to re-establish the connection. But if you can't find the files with Finder, then Consolidate won't help.

In Photos you can make a Smart Album with "Photos is Referenced " like this:

But I'm not sure about Catalina. You can see, in this test Library that I've made, that I have 14 Referenced picture files.

If you can't get access to the Time Capsule, then you may still find useful stuff inside the Library. Apparently you can see thumbnails-- is that right? Can you see full-screen previews? Those are lower resolution than the originals, but they can look just fine. If you see them, you're looking at pictures in the Resources folder in the Library Package, like I mentioned before. You should be able to access most or all of those in the Resources folder and have pretty good copies of the pictures.

Where is the Photos Library you are actually looking at and seeing these thumbnails? You can find out by choosing Photos' Settings>General, which looks something like this:

The path to the Photos Library is shown in the circle above. Mine is in my the Pictures folder in my Home folder.

My second post had details about opening and exploring the Photos Library package.

Can you export the I,ahes from Photos? Try a few:

File -> Export

Where in the Grey Rainy are you? There are Apple Authorised dealers in Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Galway that I know of.

https://ie.selectonline.com/store-finder

I've had good experiences dealing with these guys at their Limerick store. I would suggest you go in and talk to them to explain what the issue is, rather than just sending the device. But also don'r be afraid to ask for a quote on the job, if they take it on. Data recovery can be hideously expensive.

Yer_Man wrote: …This isn't an Apple Store.

Ahh-- "Apple Authorised dealers!" I missed that. They've probably seen it all! Good idea!

JaY_Ireland wrote: Yes I can only see full screen thumbnails at a lower resolution which is horrible

When I click into my time capsule there is nothing and no reference to the deleted drive but I read there is some way of finding the deleted file ???

I've been meaning to break into my Time Capsule (500 GB, I think) and see what's there.

 In older, spinning mechanical drives, like our Time Capsules, deleting a file really just removed its name from the catalog so its space could be used later by other files. So back then, if you got to it in time, before that space was replaced by another file, you could use recovery software to show what was in all that unassigned space. But new files were broken up (fragmented) and squeezed in these spaces, so all that might be left are fragments. So don't count on that.

How do I get even the 40,000 thumbnails into a proper folder carried off the Mac mini ???

Your best bet is to look into the Resources folder.

It's just a hard drive. I still haven't drilled into mine, but the only problem is ripping the cover off without hurting the drive. If you don't care that it all be put back together again, it's not problem. If the drive is OK, then it can be put into another powered enclosure. To give you an idea, enclosures cost from $12 to $40 on Amazon, and I don't know why. I just bought one for $15 that seems to work fine. I bought another one for $30 to see how it would be different, and it never worked, so I'm sending it back.

Anyway, anyone who fixes computers should be able to open the case and get your hard drive out--especially as long as you don't care if they crack the case.

You've got a great island, there! I've been to Ireland a few times for work and subsequent touring, and I'm still drooling over the pictures!

JaY_Ireland wrote: … What do I ask for when I go into the shop ??

I think you say you have this Apple Time Capsule that used to be a wifi router with an included hard drive. It doesn't work anymore, but you'd like to get out the hard drive and, if it still works, you would like to connect it to your Mac. They'll quote a price, and you'll decide if it's worth it.

I hope it has lots of memories available!

I just came home and pried my Time Capsule apart. It wasn't easily giving up secrets, but I bent a lot of metal and popped out the hard drive. In my Time Machine backup I can see a iPhoto Libraries from 2010. The Mac predicts 1 hour to transfer 45 GB of iPhoto, so this could be pretty slow…

I fear folks at the Apple store won't know what a Time Capsule is. They may not know what a 3½" drive is. I'm not sure this was ever intended to be opened-- I couldn't find any non-destructive way to get in.

I transferred about 400 GB of stuff from the Time Machine backups-- I doubt there is much there that I don't already have. The drive looks fine-- I may just re-format it and use it as an archive. Unfortunately, 500GB just isn't what it used to be.