iCloud photo library deleted my albums

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.

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