How to recover iPhoto Library after format of hard drive?

Your problem, hardware or software, may not be exactly the same as that of the original poster of this older thread, and it can be very confusing for everybody if we try to answer more than one question in each thread, which can also result in you applying the wrong advice to your particular problem.

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Hi Altaf!

Apologies for dragging this thread to the top again - this is my first post on here. I've had a very similar issue and have run the same processes as you on EaseUS software - would you (or anyone else!) be able to explain how to do this on EaseUS software? I've recently bought a licence, so don't really want to buy another licence for Stellar, but will if it's the last resort.

Thanks,

David

There is no hard drive in an iPhone. It's all solid state memory, and it is encrypted. All of your information is lost forever if you didn't use any of the half dozen different ways that Apple provides for backing up all Apple products. You might try contacting Drive Savers (https://www.drivesaversdatarecovery.com/?s=iphone), but I suspect they will tell you what I just posted. It's your best chance, but it will not be inexpensive.

Welcome to Apple Communities

Download Disk Warrior. It will be difficult to recover it, but this could help you, and you learned that you have to do backups

1. Forget about recovering the Library. It's just not going to happen. It's made up of a million database, metadata, cache and other files, plus your photographs, all in a very particular order. You're chances of reconstructing that are zero.

2. You can try recover the Photographs with a file recovery utility such as File Salvage This will scan your drive looking for recoverable files. Actual recovery will require a purchase.

3. When scanning it may find hundreds and hundreds of jpegs. Always choose to recover the largest file size. That has the best chance of being your original photo.

Regards

TD

SOLUTION : Iphoto folder recovered after formatting hardrive,

I was able for recover my iphoto libaray (intact ) after formatting the harddrive by misktake.

On top of that I formatted it in FAT32 format. My iphoto folder was huge 100GB with file and movies of all sort of formats. I had keep it on a secondary harddrive of 500 GB. one day I was formatting flash drive for somebody which was 500Mb, seems similar to my 500GB and I formatted my harddrive by mistake. I realized the mistake a week after the person called me and said there is nothing in flash disk and I find a single file on my hardrive. Needless to say the earth disappeard undeneath me. All my pictures for 10 years , 8000 thousand of them, cherised momoreies all gone. But I determined to find and I know they are intact somewhere. my biggest fear was that formatting on MS-dos format might have really deleted them , but they were there. and here how i got them back.

First I tried the Data recuse 3 software. I got the photos back but they were all jumbled up. long numerical file names and original dates were gone. No way I could sort it out back to the way it was before . So my target was to

SOLUTION : iPhoto folder recovered after formatting hard drive by mistake.

I was able for recover my iPhoto library ( intact ) after formatting the hard drive by mistake.

On top of that I formatted it in FAT32 format. My iPhoto folder was huge 100GB with file and movies of all sort of formats. I kept it on a secondary hard drive of 500 GB. one day I was formatting flash drive for somebody which was 500Mb, seems similar to my 500GB and I formatted my hard drive by mistake. I realized the mistake a week after the person called me and said there is nothing in flash disk and I find a single file on my hard drive. Needless to say the earth disappeared underneath me. All my pictures for 10 years , 8000 thousand of them, cherished memories all gone. But was I determined to find them back and I know they are intact somewhere. My biggest fear was that formatting on MS-dos format might have really deleted them , but they were there. and here is how I got them back.

First I tried the Data recuse 3 software. I got the photos back, but they were all jumbled up. Long numerical file names and original dates were gone. No way I could sort it out back to the way it was before . So my target was to recover the iPhoto folder intact.

- I bought an external hard drive with 1tb space to retrieve the data.

- The software which did the miraculous job is called " STELLAR PHOENIX MAC DATA RECOVERY" .

- I ran a deep scan all night and came up with many volumes. volume-1 was the MS dos , volume 2 was a mac system,

- I tried MS dos volume first and there was nothing on it.

- I tried the 2 volume with mac system. It got all my files and some other system file.

- I could see the iPhoto folder and click on that only to recover. After that I went for my doc and other files later.

- It took hours to retrieve my iPhoto folder intact, The folder size was right and file were there in master folder.

- I checked in FINDER , opening iPhoto with "show content " and all my picture file were there with original date.

- BUT when tried opening it in iPhoto , there was nothing. it keep showing the wait icon and nothing shows up. Empty iPhoto.

- I tired starting iPhoto , holding command -option and tried building and repairing database, nothing worked.

- Then I got this software " iPhoto library manager" .

- downloaded, installed it and pointed it towards my iPhoto folder.

- It asked for space to rebuild a new iPhoto library with existing picture and folder.

• I had another external hard drive , I used it to make a rebuild iPhoto library.
• and there I GOT IT. only took three night of pain.

IMPORTANT:

I never touched my original formatted hard drive. Don't write anything on it until you are sure you have recovered everything. open and see files with your own eyes.

- I recovered the iPhoto on another hard drive and then built it on another hard drive . Yes its pain in the neck but well worth fixing your stupid mistake of not making a back up in the first place.

I hope this helps all who are looking for iPhoto recovery and their lovely memories.

SOLUTION : iPhoto folder recovered after formatting hard drive by mistake.

I was able for recover my iPhoto library ( intact ) after formatting the hard drive by mistake.

On top of that I formatted it in FAT32 format. My iPhoto folder was huge 100GB with file and movies of all sort of formats. I kept it on a secondary hard drive of 500 GB. one day I was formatting flash drive for somebody which was 500Mb, seems similar to my 500GB and I formatted my hard drive by mistake. I realized the mistake a week after the person called me and said there is nothing in flash disk and I find a single file on my hard drive. Needless to say the earth disappeared underneath me. All my pictures for 10 years , 8000 thousand of them, cherished memories all gone. But was I determined to find them back and I know they are intact somewhere. My biggest fear was that formatting on MS-dos format might have really deleted them , but they were there. and here is how I got them back.

First I tried the Data recuse 3 software. I got the photos back, but they were all jumbled up. Long numerical file names and original dates were gone. No way I could sort it out back to the way it was before . So my target was to recover the iPhoto folder intact.

- I bought an external hard drive with 1tb space to retrieve the data.

- The software which did the miraculous job is called " STELLAR PHOENIX MAC DATA RECOVERY" .

- I ran a deep scan all night and came up with many volumes. volume-1 was the MS dos , volume 2 was a mac system,

- I tried MS dos volume first and there was nothing on it.

- I tried the 2 volume with mac system. It got all my files and some other system file.

- I could see the iPhoto folder and click on that only to recover. After that I went for my doc and other files later.

- It took hours to retrieve my iPhoto folder intact, The folder size was right and file were there in master folder.

- I checked in FINDER , opening iPhoto with "show content " and all my picture file were there with original date.

- BUT when tried opening it in iPhoto , there was nothing. it keep showing the wait icon and nothing shows up. Empty iPhoto.

- I tired starting iPhoto , holding command -option and tried building and repairing database, nothing worked.

- Then I got this software " iPhoto library manager" .

- downloaded, installed it and pointed it towards my iPhoto folder.

- It asked for space to rebuild a new iPhoto library with existing picture and folder.

• I had another external hard drive , I used it to make a rebuild iPhoto library.
• and there I GOT IT. only took three night of pain.

IMPORTANT:

I never touched my original formatted hard drive. Don't write anything on it until you are sure you have recovered everything. open and see files with your own eyes.

- I recovered the iPhoto on another hard drive and then built it on another hard drive . Yes its pain in the neck but well worth fixing your stupid mistake of not making a back up in the first place.

I hope this helps all who are looking for iPhoto recovery and their lovely memories.

Dear Altaf Anwar,

I am in a situation similar to your. My drive is corrupted and I can't have access to my iPhoto library. I still can see that there is 500 Gig of data on my drive, which is 1.5 T. I would like to know which option you have used in Stellar Phoenix to recover the full structure of you iPhoto library ?

Thank you,

Simon

Well my drive was not corrupted, I formatted it by mistake. I suggest you should try repair disk software first. Usually in corrupt cases the boot sector , which is the small start part of hard drive is damaged. It takes less time to fix it rather than recovering the whole harddrive. If you can fix the boot sector than you will be able to access the harddrive.

Mac DISK UTILITY is a good program, to start. It has good disk repair options.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8FCEZelSAI

If that does not work then google the "best recovery software for external corrupt harddrive" .

Symantec is a good option.

Incase you need to recover it using STELLAR PHONEX software , the option I sellected was "Formatted media/Lost file recovery"

I'm having a similar issue however my photos were saved on an external harddrive (using time machine) well before my Macbook died on me...I now have a Mac running OS X Mountain Lion...when i tried to import the photos from the back up on the external, i get this note: "The iPhoto library is a Time Machine backup, and so cannot be used as the main library. Reopen iPhoto with the Option key held down to choose another library."... when i try to choose another library there's no other option available...are there any solutions? I don't see any reason why the photos cannot be recovered as they were saved using Timemachine...thanks!!

cjconst123 wrote:

I'm having a similar issue however my photos were saved on an external harddrive (using time machine) well before my Macbook died on me...I now have a Mac running OS X Mountain Lion...when i tried to import the photos from the back up on the external, i get this note: "The iPhoto library is a Time Machine backup, and so cannot be used as the main library. Reopen iPhoto with the Option key held down to choose another library."... when i try to choose another library there's no other option available...are there any solutions? I don't see any reason why the photos cannot be recovered as they were saved using Timemachine...thanks!!

Instead of importing the photos from the Time Machine backup on the external, instead use Time Machine as described in this article http://pondini.org/TM/E3.html to recover the entire iPhoto Library file and place it back into your new hard drive. Then start iPhoto with the option key held down and point it to this recovered iPhoto Library (it looks like a file but is really a folder).

This worked perfectly! Thank you very much!

I was able to recover all my photos and videos through iskysoft data recovery it saved my life

you just have to download it and scan your computer for the photos or documents