I have 74k photo's in my iPhoto trash and crashes when emptying. I have tried deleting the com.apple.iPhoto.plist but still won't empty.

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I have 74k photo's in my iPhoto trash and crashes when emptying. I have tried deleting the com.apple.iPhoto.plist but still won't empty.

Hi! I have 74k photo's in my iPhoto trash and it crashes when trying to empty. Clearly it's too much for the system to handle so after researching I downloaded 'Trashit!' which didn't help even if I selected one photo and dragged it to the trashit icon, not a single photo will delete from the iPhoto trash.

I've tried creating a new album but the photo's won't drag. I have tried deleting the com.apple.iPhoto.plist and done several timely rebuilds but I still can't find a way to empty the trash. I hope there's something really simple I'm missing here, any help appreciated 🙂

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.5)

Posted on Feb 10, 2013 3:54 AM

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Answer 1

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Yer_Man

Level 10

162,254 points

Feb 10, 2013 5:33 AM in response to JuliaGulia83

Trashit and similar apps only affect the system trash and have nothing at all to do with iPhoto. Using it on material in iPhoto risks damaging the Library.

It sounds like you've got a corrupted Library there - can you give us some history? How do you end up with 74k images in the trash? Include the version of iPhoto that you have and the OS too, plus any other relevant information you can think of.

Regards

TD

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Answer 2

Old Toad

Level 10

207,283 points

Feb 10, 2013 11:25 AM in response to JuliaGulia83

iiPhoto is known to lock up if you try to delete a large number of photos at a time. Here are a couple of ways to get out of the predicament you're in:

1 - go into iPhoto's General preference pane and uncheck the Show item counts checkbox:

and then try emptying the iPhoto Trash bin again. It's iffy however.

2 - If that fails and you don't use the Rating stars you can do the following: select all of the photos in the trash and Control-click to bringup the contextual menu. There will be the 5 stars for the ratings. Select either 5 or 1 to apply that rating to the photos.

Next create a smart album with the criteria:

selecting the number of start you applied to those in the Trash bin.

Move the photos from the Trash bin to the Library and the Smart Album will immediately be populated with those photos.

You can now select about 100 photos or so at a time and use the Command+Option+Delete key combination to move them back to the Trash bin and empty it. Repeat with groups of about 100 or so photos till they are all deleted. Then delete the Trash bin in the Dock to completely remove them from your hard drive.

OT

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Answer 3

JuliaGulia83 Author

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Feb 10, 2013 7:50 PM in response to Old Toad

G'day Old Toad, thanks for getting in touch!

The version of iPhoto is 9.4.2 and my OS is X Lion 10.7.5 on a 500GB late 2011 MacBook Pro with 8GB memory and 2.2Ghz intel core i7 processor.

I went in to preferences the other day to uncheck the 'Show Item Counts' but it was already unchecked.

I have read about the star rating solution/populating a smart album with the photo's and tried it the other day also but I get as far as highlighting all the photo's and rating them 5 star, then I get the beachball spinning for ages without any progress. (I am trying it again now after another rebuild, the beachball is still spinning after an hour so I will let you know what eventuates).

My Mac HD is telling me I only have 17MB left of space out of my 500G HD so I'm thinking this may be a problem when and if I get to the part of repopulating in a 'Smart Album'?

I have backed up everything with Time Machine and deleted as much as I can to free up space. I only have about 2k photos and videos total in finder and other iPhoto albums. (these need to stay because I'm using them in unfinished iMovies.) and I have about 35GB of music in iTunes which if you think will help I can delete.

FYI- It won't let me perform any software updates given the start-up disk is full.

Really got my self in a catch 22 situation here... Thanks so much for any further help!!!

Julia from Oz 🙂

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Answer 4

JuliaGulia83 Author

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Feb 10, 2013 8:08 PM in response to Yer_Man

Thanks TD.... I didn't know I couldn't use Trashit with iPhoto, explains a lot and I've now deleted that app.

Yes, 74k is rediculous amount of photos hu! You see, I converted from a PC 8 months ago and naturally imported everything over from an external HD including what was already backed up on there. I thought I would just delete what I didn't need and thought it was 'DELETED' until I recently started investigating why my Mac has zero space left. And there it was, iPhoto has a TRASH...?! Silly me.... Can you believe I didn't know haha, typical Mac rookie here.

The version of iPhoto is 9.4.2 and I'm running OS X Lion 10.7.5.

For more info on what I have tried/where I'm at please see my answer to Old Toad above.

Cheers!

Julia

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Answer 5

JuliaGulia83 Author

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Feb 11, 2013 4:20 AM in response to Old Toad

Bummer! So I was able to select all the photo's in the trash and make them 5 stars, good, however they don't populate in the 'Smart Album' that I made with the 5 star criteria.

I tried rebooting and rating/moving/dragging even just one photo from trash but nothing would budge.

I tried 'empty' once more and then after a minute or so you get the 'iPhoto quit unnexpectadly' message and after relaunching it once again asks me to fix the library.

Now iPhoto has completed another rebuild but the smart album I made is gone and the trashed photo's aren't 5 stars anymore.

I have since been able to rate the trashed photo's the with 5 stars and make another smart album with the 5 star criteria once again but they still don't populate and iPhoto continues to cease up if I try to drag etc.

FYI- If I go in to a completely different album ie last import and rate a photo with 5 stars, wham, there it is in my 5 star smart album, so we know that element works, it's just the trashed items that are not budging!!

*May add also that when the 5 star photo appears in the smart album it still remains in it's original place also, so I'm wondering even if we do get the trashed items to appear in the smart album would they actually be removed from the trash folder anyway?

Any more suggestions are so incredibly appreciated, thank you indeed!

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Answer 6

Old Toad

Level 10

207,283 points

Feb 11, 2013 9:24 AM in response to JuliaGulia83

My Mac HD is telling me I only have 17MB left of space out of my 500G HD so I'm thinking this may be a problem

No, that's adequate free space. Since it freezes when trying to add the rating to all the photos at one time try smaller groups.

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Answer 7

Feb 11, 2013 9:39 AM in response to Old Toad

17MB is adequate free space? That's nothing.

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Answer 8

Old Toad

Level 10

207,283 points

Feb 11, 2013 9:49 AM in response to Peter Bannon

Opps. I saw GB 😊. DANGER WILL ROGERS,. DANGER!!!!

Julia:

You are in serious trouble. Adding any more files to your Mac can cause it to freeze, lock up, crash and not be bootable. You must immediately get an external HD and move about 10-15 GB to the EHD and delete the files from your boot drive. I can't stress it enough what a serious situation you're in.

Thanks for the catch Pete.

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Answer 9

JuliaGulia83 Author

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Feb 11, 2013 12:20 PM in response to Old Toad

YIKES!! Bold red, must be bad... Thanks OT and Peter.

I have since found a solution...well at least I'm in the middle of it and I suspect I'll be here for a while.

I simply 'PUT BACK' all the photo's in trash (let it run over night) and now I'm able to go in to 'Events' and select around 100 or so pics safely at a time, I 'Move to trash' then empty the trash in iPhoto then empty my system trash. It's time consuming and I need to repeat this process circa 700 times but I'm happy when I periodically check my HD and we're in to Gigs of space not Megabytes haha... 😁

And a quick mention too, that the photo's now appear in the 'Smart Album' we made with the 5 star criteria however you can't 'Move to trash' (this option is light grey in under the 'Photo's' tab) hence why I'm deleting from 'Events'.

I hope this has helped others who find themselves in such a pickle!

Thanks for all your promt efforts OT, TD & Pete... Cheers from Australia, have a rippa day 😎

Jools

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