Lost almost all my original photos in iPhoto. Have rebuilt the library to no avail.

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Lost almost all my original photos in iPhoto. Have rebuilt the library to no avail.

I tried to share my events and photos from iPhoto in Flickr by copying the events and then clicking share button in iPhoto and choosing Flickr. After some events appeared in Flickr in new albums, I realized I had lost some of the events and photos in iPhoto. If I open iPhoto I see my events some with cover photos and some just a black box with original title but empty. When I click the ones with cover photo, many have only a few photos (originally they had many more) and worse when I click the thumbnails a black box appears with a gray triangle and an exclamation mark in the middle. I have followed the rebuilding option from iPhoto First Aid but got no where. The library shows that I have the original number of photos I had (over 38,000) and also the same number of events and album titles BUT the original photos are mostly missing, only a few thousand are showing in the original size! Most of thumbnails seem to be there though many are also missing. I just cannot locate the originals. In the Masters file in iPhoto Library I don't see many original photos either. It just seems all my photos are deleted! The subfolders in Masters are 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014 (I suppose for the 4 years I have used this Mac). The sub-subfolders under each year are named with numbers, like under 2011 there is only one called 11, under 2012 there is 05 and 07 sub-sub folders, under 2013, 04 and 08, and there are more under 2014 from 02 to 08. When I click any of these sub-sub folders I get additional folders with numbers but no order. If I click these folders I get a long number folder which is generally empty except for some where I can see original photos. I even tried to see if I could find a backup of iPhoto Library through Time Machine (I use CCC to backup my Mac) but the Library files I found were all from the time AFTER I had tried to share my photos in Flickr. So I did not find additional originals. It seems Flickr has just literally deleted most of my originals by taking them away from my hard disk!! Unfortunately they don't show up in Flickr either!

What has happened to my original photos? Are they lost or deleted for ever? I tried to use recovery software to see on my hard disk whether there were any of my original photos but didn't see them. Can someone help/advise what to do? I use an I Mac with OSX 10.9.4?and iPhoto 9.5.1. Thank you.

iMac

Posted on Aug 31, 2014 3:33 AM

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Answer 1

Yer_Man

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Aug 31, 2014 5:24 AM in response to Mass286

I'm not clear on what exactly you've done there - like why you might be copying events and to where - but the only solution for missing files is to restore from back up.

BTW those long numbers of folder names are the date and time of import.

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Answer 2

Mass286 Author

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Aug 31, 2014 6:09 AM in response to Yer_Man

Thank you Terence. Let me explain better. I wanted to have a copy of my photos in Flickr. So I tested with selecting one event in iPhoto and using the Share button to copy the photos it contained in an Album in Flickr. That worked ok. Then I selected all my events and clicked Share in iPhoto to copy them to Flickr. That is where things got probably messed up. As there were many original photos, this took a long time over few days and I tried to stop it. Whatever went wrong there isn't clear to me. When I went back to iPhoto next I saw the situation described above. Most original disappeared. Unfortunately, the back up I found in my external disk is from the same time I seem to have lost the files. I have copied into iPhoto Lib but it has the same problem with most originals missing. The funny thing is that when I noticed my photos were missing, I checked the size iPhoto Lib and it was about 25GB. Then I went and checked the 7 backups of Pictures in Time Machine and noticed two were around 100GB from Two weeks earlier just about the time I did the Flickr transfer. So I selected one of those and opened iPhoto using that bigger file. But it was still too short of the original 38,000 photos only a few thousands.

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Answer 3

Yer_Man

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Aug 31, 2014 7:29 AM in response to Mass286

What version of iPhoto?

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Answer 4

Mass286 Author

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Aug 31, 2014 7:56 AM in response to Yer_Man

iPhoto 9.5.1 and OS X 10.9.4

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Answer 5

Yer_Man

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Aug 31, 2014 8:01 AM in response to Mass286

Then I went and checked the 7 backups of Pictures in Time Machine and noticed two were around 100GB

You cannot open that from iPhoto. You need to restore it from Time Machine first.

iPhoto '11: Restoring from Time Machine with iPhoto '11 (9.2 or later) and OS X Lion 10.7.2 (or later)

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Answer 6

Mass286 Author

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Sep 2, 2014 12:03 AM in response to Yer_Man

iPhoto 9.5.1 and OS X 10.9.4

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Answer 7

Mass286 Author

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Sep 2, 2014 12:06 AM in response to Mass286

Thanks Terence. Sorry it took me a while to come back to my problem. YES indeed I restored from Time Machine first. I found 6-7 backups, each having a different iPhoto Library size. I restored from the largest files (Twice). Unfortunately, the result is the same there are no originals. Only Thumbnails (and even not all). The locations, names and dates of Events are but very few original photos.

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Answer 8

Yer_Man

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Sep 2, 2014 12:25 AM in response to Mass286

The size of the iPhoto back up in Time Machine is meaningless. You need tor store from before the event occurring.

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Answer 9

Mass286 Author

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Sep 2, 2014 1:25 AM in response to Yer_Man

OK I understand. But the problem is that all the backups I have on the external disk that was connected to my iMac are AFTER the event. I think restoring from any of them will not solve the problem but I will restore from all of them to see if I find anything different. I have also a Time Capsule (2TB) that I used for backups before but then it got full and I stopped using it. However when I connect it to my iMac it doesn't show and backups on the Time Machine screen. I don't how to see the content of this Time Capsule as you cannot connect with a cable to the iMac (as far as I understand it works only through my network). So if you can advise a way to see the contents of this Time Capsule maybe I find an older iPhoto Lib there. As said I cannot get it to work with the Time Machine. When connected it only shows the current files and no back up screens.

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Answer 10

Yer_Man

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Sep 2, 2014 5:31 AM in response to Mass286

But the problem is that all the backups I have on the external disk that was connected to my iMac are AFTER the event.

Then you don't have a back up, really.

There's a Time Capsule forum here

Time Capsule

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