Iphotos Package Contents: What are all these folders for? Is it too large to back up in the cloud?

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Level 1

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Iphotos Package Contents: What are all these folders for? Is it too large to back up in the cloud?

Dear experts, I am quite a newbie when it comes to understanding the Mac filing system, as I originally came from the PC world. There's lots of things I dont understand in the iMac file viewer and how to organise and backup my photos is an important issue for me.

I know that if I want to look at the original photo files on my iMac, I can right-click on users/myname/pictures and select "Show Package Contents".

Question 1 - What are all these folders for?

Please can someone explain what is the difference between all the folders I see? Some of them seem to be exact duplicates of the others e.g. Masters, Modified and Originals all seem to have the same content. So here is a list of folders that I see. What is in them?, or what is their purpose?

Data

Data.noindex

Modified

Originals

Apple TV Photo Cache

Attachments

Auto Import

Backup

Caches

Contents

Database

iLifeShared

iPod Photo Cache

Masters

Previews

ProjectCache

Thumbnails

Question 2 - Which photo folder should I back-up?

If I want to keep a physical backup of my photos, which of the above folders should I copy to an external hard drive? (I use Get Backup to automatically copy all important new or changed files to an external drive)

Question 3 - Using the cloud: What is the best way to backup my large photo library in the cloud safely?

I would like to have some kind of safe backup in the cloud for my photos. However the size of the iphoto library is huge at 165GB. Even the Masters folder is huge. It is 130GB. Is it possible to back up files of this size in the cloud? I have a couple of services called photo streaming and Dropbox, but they don't seem to be able to handle this kind of size. Photo streaming only works with 1000 photos (as far as I can tell), and my Dropbox probably has a limit too. I guess it's about 5GB. I am already using about 3GB of my Dropbox space for other files. I would consider both paid and free solutions.

Many thanks to all the experts for your help!

Posted on Mar 9, 2014 6:44 AM

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Answer 1

Yer_Man

Level 10

162,314 points

Mar 9, 2014 7:26 AM in response to Tricky57

know that if I want to look at the original photo files on my iMac, I can right-click on users/myname/pictures and select "Show Package Contents".

Don't do that. That's like opening the hood of your car and trying to figure out what all the different bits and peices are and which you can yank out and dispose of. Simply, there are no user-serviceable parts in here.

So, your Question 2:

You back up the iPhoto Library as a single unit.

Most Simple Back Up:

Drag the iPhoto Library from your Pictures Folder to another Disk. This will make a copy on that disk.

Slightly more complex: Use an app that will do incremental back ups. This is a very good way to work. The first time you run the back up the app will make a complete copy of the Library. Thereafter it will update the back up with the changes you have made. That makes subsequent back ups much faster. Many of these apps also have scheduling capabilities: So set it up and it will do the back up automatically.

Example of such apps: Chronosync- but there are many others. Search on MacUpdateor the App Store

Your question 3:

There is no good back up to the Cloud. There are a couple of reasons for this. One is that the datasets are so large and the cloud services shapre their download speeds. This means restoring can take days to complete. Then, and this is the big problem, the iPhoto Library needs to sit on a disk formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Bluntly, no servers online are formatted appropriately, and if the Library is written to - by an incremental back up, for instance - there is a very high likelihood that the library will be corrupted.

Your Question 1:

The Library you're describing there sounds like one that has been updated a few times. Not everything you list there is a folder. Some will be aliases.

The Data folders hold thumbnails.

The Masters and Originals folders hold the files as imported from the camera

The Previews hold the versions of the edited photos that are accessed via the Sharing mechanism.

I think if you look losely that you'll notice that one of the Data folders and one of either the Masters or the Originals folders is actually an alias.

Everything else is a database or cache file of some form. All are required for iPhoto to work.

As an FYI:

For help accessing your photos in iPhoto see this user tip:

https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-4491

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