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Level 1

10 points

Ah! My library just shrank to nothingness!

I have several iPhoto libraries including one that I use for business (product shots and business meetups). The library was about 40GB and was on a shared drive attached to my Apple Extreme Base Station so I could access it from three computers at home as well as over the internet when away. This has worked fine for 7 or 8 months.

In the last couple of days I have changed the location of my AEBs in my house, which involved unplugging it and the external drive and relocating. I also renamed my Base Station. The drive was then reconnected and the partitions on it were again shared.

This evening when we tried to open the iPhoto library that was on the drive, it opened with a bunch of black windows where events used to be. It couldn't find any pictures. So we quit iPhoto and tried openning again by clicking the library file from Finder. This time it wouldn't open at all. It wouldn't even say the library was corrupted. I tried command/option open, but it wouldn't give me the repair dialogue either. It merely gave me a popup asking me what iphoto library I wanted to open and listed my other libraries, not this one.

Showing package contents revealed few folders. 134MB in ALL! My backup is unfortunately more than a month old (kicking myself) so I didn't lose everything, but still way too much to lose to a progam flaw.

Did we do something wrong here? How can a library on an external drive just ERASE that much data without warning? It worked yesterday, by the way, when I unloaded an event without problem.

We use iPhoto Buddy Helper for launching between iPhoto libraries if that makes any difference.

And the only other weird symptom I can think of is what I posted about in another thread: in my family library, not this one which was damaged, iPhoto stopped letting me drag and drop files onto my desktop. It started by letting me d&d all of them; then I could do only a handful; and now only one at a time. Weird.

Any suggestions on where I might find these 40GB of photos hiding?

Thanks.

MacBook Pro, OS X Mountain Lion

Posted on Dec 12, 2012 2:52 AM

21 replies

LarryHN

Level 10

106,110 points

Dec 12, 2012 1:24 PM in response to Howmanyds

No it does not -

Several things can happen (and either Old Toad or Terance are the experts in this area) including a phantom library being created by trying to access your library on a volume that is not available

This is not a copy of a library but a new blank library - if you launched iPhoto while the wireless library was not available this could have happened - it would explain having a new library that does not contain older photos - but it would not affect the actual old library on the wireless network

You also might have launched iPhoto while the EHD was not available - if that happened you get a virtual volume that is invisible - to check or to resolve this quit iPhoto, dismount your External hard drive and in the finder under the go menu go to folder /Volumes - if your EHD shows there drag it to the desktop, reconnect your EHD and restart the system

Howmanyds Author

Level 1

10 points

Dec 12, 2012 1:48 PM in response to LarryHN

I haven't tried your suggestion yet Larry, because I'm working remotely at the moment using Splashtop connecting to my Mac. But I was able to run disk inventory X. Look what it reveals: http://screencast.com/t/hBqegnmXXr

58 GB of "other files" which it can't identify. Now the question is how to get to them??

Yer_Man

Level 10

162,350 points

Dec 12, 2012 2:48 PM in response to Howmanyds

I'd park this until you get home and can access the disks directly.

Howmanyds Author

Level 1

10 points

Dec 12, 2012 4:33 PM in response to Yer_Man

GOT IT!!!

I unplugged the drive from the AEBs and plugged it into one of the machines directly. Interestingly, what Finder was showing me before when accessing the shared drive over the network looked like all the files on the "Airport Files" partition when in fact these files are all within a folder called "Shared" on the "Airport Files" partition, which I can now see with the drive connected directly.

I'm going to attribute this to the "enable file sharing" setting within Airport Utility: http://screencast.com/t/Yxu3ytHaN

Perhaps before moving the Base Station's location this setting was off and I was connecting to the drive somehow anyway, and seeing the root of the partition. I must have enabled this setting once in the new location so it created a Shared directory. When iPhoto Buddy tried to access the library it knew to be in that location and couldn't find it, it must have created that new library. I don't know how those 32 random pictures got in there. They really are a random selection from the true library.

Thanks for all your help! Now I'm going to look into setting us up to only access the drive and the library when it's connected with a wire.

By the way, does that include having the drive connected as it was to the Base Station and accessing from an ethernet-connected computer, or do I just not want to go there?

Howmanyds Author

Level 1

10 points

Dec 12, 2012 4:34 PM in response to Howmanyds

Oh, and there were 61 GB of photos - even more than I thought. 🙂

LarryHN

Level 10

106,110 points

Dec 12, 2012 4:59 PM in response to Howmanyds

AS long as the network is wired you will be fine - the key point is not to edit photos with iPhoto over a wireless link

is inherently unsafe. If you're trying to edit the Library (that is, make albums, move photos around, keyword, make books or slideshows etc.) or edit individual photos in it via Wireless be very careful. Dropouts are a common fact of wireless networking, and should one occur while the app is writing to the database then your Library will be damaged. Simply, I would not do this with my Libraries.

As I said above, I would not access my Libraries wirelessly.

This issue being warned about is editing in iPhoto over a wireless network

If the access to your library is all via wired connections ok - if it includes a wireless link then it is not recommended

Ah! My library just shrank to nothingness!