How long should it take to create thumbnails from a restore procedure .....running Snow Leopard and the backup was on a WD external drive. I have appoximately 21,000 photos and so far it's over 45 hours creating thumbnails.

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How long should it take to create thumbnails from a restore procedure .....running Snow Leopard and the backup was on a WD external drive. I have appoximately 21,000 photos and so far it's over 45 hours creating thumbnails.

Trying to restore my photos to a new hard drive installed in my macbook running Snow Leopard OS X (latest version). Photos using Aperture were stored in a WD external hard drive. Got it to a point where it says creating thumbnails but now upwards of 45 hours. There were approximately 21,000 photos. The photos were taken with a digital camera 8 megapixels. Any idea how long this should take. Don't know how long to let this run or if it's an exercise in futility!

Mac Mini, Mac OS X (10.0.x), Airport Express

Posted on Oct 27, 2011 2:22 PM

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Answer 1

Oct 27, 2011 3:33 PM in response to jeezlouise

That's long enough, imho. Pull the plug, see where you are, and either start over or move forward.

What backup/restore program are you using, and how is the WD attached to your computer?

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Answer 2

jeezlouise Author

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Oct 27, 2011 5:22 PM in response to Kirby Krieger

Tried on my own using Migration Assistant (used a firewire with the WD)........ran into the same problem. Took the computer and the WD external hard drive to an Apple Store (genius bar). He used a restore command that I hadn't used and sure enough the vault transferred over to the hard drive and then began the process of creating thumbnails and here I am.........45 plus hours into that process and have NO idea if anything is happening at all. Tried clicking on the wheel next to the thumbnail as someone else suggested just to see the progress, however no "pane" popped up to show what was happening. These photos are a once in a lifetime record of a major trip and I thought I was being so careful using this external hard drive to back them up.....by the way, I purchased this hard drive in an Apple Store as well under their direction. Geez......now what?

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