rowanmcdonald1991
Level 1 (5 points)

Q: iCloud photo library deleted my albums

Hi there,

 

I've been using iCloud Photo Library for a few months and it has been working fine.

 

However, I recently got a new iPhone and when the synchronisation had finished, all of my photos were there, but half of my albums were missing.

 

This change (the albums losses) has now occurred across my iPhone, iPad, iMac and using iCloud.com.

 

How can I recover the albums?

 

I have a time machine backup of my Photos library with the correct albums, however I'm worried about enabling iCloud on that library:

 

1. will the photos I have taken since the last backup download from iCloud?

 

2. will all my photos become duplicates when they merge with the ones already in the cloud?

 

3. will Photos choose the most recent state to overwrite my backup library? (that is, arguably the most recent state of my iCloud PL is the incorrect one, so will iCloud prefer that?)

 

Thanks for your help.

iPhone 6s Plus, iOS 9.0.1

Posted on Sep 27, 2015 3:50 PM

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rowanmcdonald1991

Q: iCloud photo library deleted my albums

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  • by keven-77,

    keven-77 keven-77 Oct 2, 2015 8:08 AM in response to rowanmcdonald1991
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 2, 2015 8:08 AM in response to rowanmcdonald1991

    I have the same issue with several missing albums. I'm not 100% sure when this occurred, however I'm guessing it was when I turned off iCloud Photo Library on my iPad, removed the photos and then turn it back on – I did this because I was having sync issues with Photos on the iPad. This would be similar to you syncing up a new iPhone. My guess is based on what I read here: Photo app missing iCloud Photo Albums

     

    It seems as though the synchronization (or resync) is triggering the issue with the lost albums. This has been driving me nuts for a while now. I've tried restoring my photo library (from time machine) to an external drive and opening that library (using the "option" key during Photos launch) but unfortunately the most recent backup didn't have the missing albums either.

     

    One thing I noticed is that if I "Show Package Contents" of the Photos Library and go to resources > recovery > RKAlbum there's a file titled 0000000000.lij that I can open with TextEdit and it contains the names of some of the missing albums when I search (⌘F) within the file. Not sure if there's a way to use this file for recovery but thought this info might be useful for someone a little more technically skilled than myself.

     

    Another thing that I noticed is that I no longer have any folders left within the Albums section so I'm not sure if all the albums that were lost might have been those contained within folders. For example, the initial import from iPhoto creates a folder with all your moments and now that folder is gone along with all the albums that were in it.

     

    Any help regarding this would be greatly appreciated. If anyone needs more info from me just let me know.

  • by Old Toad,

    Old Toad Old Toad Oct 2, 2015 10:12 AM in response to rowanmcdonald1991
    Level 10 (141,679 points)
    Photos for Mac
    Oct 2, 2015 10:12 AM in response to rowanmcdonald1991

    It's been reported that activating the iCloud Photo Library on a mobile device removed the albums in the library.  See léonie's post in this topic: Re: Photo Folders & albums missing

    OTsig.png