Photos App Repairing Broken from Time Machine

What exactly do you mean about copying everything from the Time Machine backup manually? Generally, you should use only the Time Machine interface to restore items.

You might try doing that with your Photos Library & seeing if that helps.

You don't need to copy everything. What you do need to do is use the Time Machine interface to restore items, not drag & drop via the Finder or similar "manual" techniques.

As long as you still have a Time Machine backup with the original Photos Library on it, you can restore that to your Mac. To see a backup other than the default one, press the Option key, then choose "Browse Other Backup Disks" from the Time Machine menu in the menu bar. This is the same procedure you should use if you use multiple Time Machine backup volumes & do not want to restore something from the one most recently used. As mentioned here, by default you only see the backups from the most recently used backup set.

Regardless of how well it worked for you in the past, it is not a good idea to manually copy anything from a Time Machine backup back to its original location on your startup drive using Finder, Terminal commands, or any other method besides the one provided by the Time Machine interface. Restoring items involves more than simply copying them from one location to another, particularly when hard links are involved, as they are in both Time Machine backups & (sometimes) in Photos Libraries. Simply put, the Time Machine interface takes care of the arcane "under the hood" stuff that the manual methods do not.

But still it doesn't work

What is it? Were you able to restore your iPhoto Library that you originally converted to the Photos library? If so can you open it with iPhoto? iPhoto was not deleted from your hard drive, only removed from the Dock. If you have iPhoto 9.6.1 you can still use your iPhoto library. If you don't have that version but some earlier version of 9.x try following Terence Devlin's iinstructions in this post to obtain iPhoto 9.6.1 from the App Store:

Terence Devlin

Apr 14, 2015 11:21 AM

Re: Is Iphoto gone ? i want it back!

in response to Johannes666

Recommended

Go to the App Store and check out the Purchases List. If iPhoto is there then it will be v9.6.1

If it is there, then drag your existing iPhoto app (not the library, just the app) to the trash

Install the App from the App Store.

Sometimes iPhoto is not visible on the Purchases List. it may be hidden. See this article for details on how to unhide it.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4928

One question often asked: Will I lose my Photos if I reinstall?

iPhoto the application and the iPhoto Library are two different parts of the iPhoto programme. So, reinstalling the app should not affect the Library. BUT you should always have a back up before doing this kind of work. Always.

One you get iPhoto 9.6.1 open and repair the library running the Following First Aid options: #1 - Repair Library Permissions and #4 - Repair Database. Next drag the repaired iPhoto Library onto the Photos icon in the Dock to start the conversion process to a Photos library.

Click On Purchases and check in there:

You should have a second library with the extension .migratedphotolibrary. iPhoto 9.6.1 can open it.

Close Photos and drag the iPhoto Library package onto the Photos icon in the Dock. It should open and convert the library to a new Photos library.

flo_w wrote:

Thanks Old Toad – i found it under "Purchases". But theres no way to open the library, and i don't have any migratedphotolibrary..

Your iPhoto Library from your screenshot should have the "migratedphotolibrary" extension. You aren't seeing it because by default extensions are not shown. You can check this by navigating to your Pictures folder in Finder, selecting the iPhoto Library shown in your screenshot, & pressing command + i to display the Finder's "Get Info" window. There you should see it listed as "iPhoto Library.migratedphotolibrary" in the Name & Extension section of the Info window.

That library is a new, empty library. If you don't have a backup of your drive and library from just before you installed Yosemite you'll have to rely on file recovery software to try to recover as many of the photos from the hard drive as possible, i.e. those that have not been overwritten.

flo_w wrote:

I may have a very old iPhoto Library with this "migratedphotolibrary" extension - but it will be months old without many of my recently made iPhone pictures.

Use the most recent iPhoto Library restored from your Time Machine backup before you reinstalled OS X 10.10.3. If it was the source for the migration to Photos, it will have the "migratedphotolibrary" extension; otherwise just the "photolibrary" one.