IPhoto (most recent) just crashed while uploading photos. It tried to fix itself and in the process erased every single photo. Is there any way to retrieve them?

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IPhoto (most recent) just crashed while uploading photos. It tried to fix itself and in the process erased every single photo. Is there any way to retrieve them?

While uploading my family Christmas photos, my computer went completely blank. When it started back up again, I had a message that iPhoto had been damaged and needed to be corrected. So I let it restore and it took several minutes. Then I had a message that it could not find any photos or data and it restart the computer. If that didn't work it said to push "option and command" buttons while starting iPhoto. Nothing worked.

It appears as though I have lost thousands and thousands of pictures including all vacations, last moment s with my father, kids entire childhoods. The photos are invaluable. I understand that they are on the hard drive. I have had to restore everything from the hard drive once when my laptop was stolen and I lost about a third of the photos because they came back damaged. I hope this is not the only solution to the problem.

Does anyone know how to restore iPhoto or retieve my photos? What happened? I am guessing iPhoto is not a reliable place to keep my pictures anymore.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

A

MacBook Pro (13-inch Mid 2009), OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.4)

Posted on Dec 15, 2013 10:45 AM

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Answer 1

Yer_Man

Level 10

162,308 points

Dec 15, 2013 1:17 PM in response to andrea6782

Do you have a back up?

What version of iPhoto? Assuming 09 or later:

Option 1

Back Up and try rebuild the library: hold down the command and option (or alt) keys while launching iPhoto. Use the resulting dialogue to rebuild. Choose to Repair Database. If that doesn't help, then try again, this time using Rebuild Database.

If that fails:

Option 2

Download iPhoto Library Manager and use its rebuild function. (In early versions of Library Manager it's the File -> Rebuild command. In later versions it's under the Library menu.)

This will create an entirely new library. It will then copy (or try to) your photos and all the associated metadata and versions to this new Library, and arrange it as close as it can to what you had in the damaged Library. It does this based on information it finds in the iPhoto sharing mechanism - but that means that things not shared won't be there, so no slideshows, books or calendars, for instance - but it should get all your events, albums and keywords, faces and places back.

Because this process creates an entirely new library and leaves your old one untouched, it is non-destructive, and if you're not happy with the results you can simply return to your old one.

Regards

TD

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