Jorney

Q: Photos.library won't open once moved to iCloud folder.

Hi. I discovered something that raised the hairs on my back, my Photos libraries won't open once moved to the iCloud folder. Photos are worth its weight in gold and of course we want to save them forever so i decided to store them in the cloud, and what could be better than Apples cloud.

 

But, after they were uploaded i wanted to check if everything was ok but NO, NONE of my near 100GB libraries would open. And yes, i waited to all of them was done uploading.

 

Just to check and confirm i made a second folder and placed one of my libraries there, just one. Waited until it was uploaded and then tried to open it, but NO, it would not open and it said it was damaged like the other libraries.

 

And before someone ask, yes I'm talking about the cloud folder, iCloud. Not the main Photo library that syncs with my other Apple devices.Screen Shot 2015-10-28 at 06.33.18.png

 

Anyone else have experienced this or know what to do and how to solve this ?

 

Regards

iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2014), OS X El Capitan (10.11.1)

Posted on Oct 27, 2015 10:42 PM

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Q: Photos.library won't open once moved to iCloud folder.

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  • by léonie,Solvedanswer

    léonie léonie Oct 27, 2015 11:25 PM in response to Jorney
    Level 10 (107,185 points)
    iCloud
    Oct 27, 2015 11:25 PM in response to Jorney
    my Photos libraries won't open once moved to the iCloud folder.

    Photo Libraries do not work, if you place them onto synced volumes. None of my test libraries survived being put onto iCloud Drive or into a Dropbox folder.

    Apple did not write anywhere, if a Photo library can be kept on a network volume or in a synced folder, but from my experiments the same holds as for iPhoto Libraries and Aperture libraries, the structure of the library packages is very similar. And for Aperture libraries and iPhoto Libraries we know:

    Also, it is strongly recommended that the Aperture library be stored on a locally mounted hard drive. Storing the Aperture library on a network share can also lead to poor performance, data corruption, or data loss.

    See:Use locally mounted Mac OS X Extended volumes for your Aperture library

     

    To rescue your libraries, wait for the iCloud upload to finish, then drag them back to a local folder and try to repair them, while they are no longer in iCloud. If repairing is still not possible, restore them from your last backup.

     

    The only supported way to have your library in iCloud is iCloud Photo Library. For iCloud Photo Library a syncing has been implemented, that is safe.

  • by Jorney,

    Jorney Jorney Oct 27, 2015 11:43 PM in response to léonie
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 27, 2015 11:43 PM in response to léonie

    Thank you very much Leonie for your response and for confirming my problem. This is too bad from Apple and its very odd that they do not mention this nor fix it.

     

    Since i posted this problem i have tried different solutions, one: compress the libraries to zip-files before uploading, and two: trying to download the library via iCloud web-interface ( Log into iCloud with Safari ).

     

    Its possible to Zip the libraries but it demands lot of extra work, time and effort and it shouldn't be like this.

     

    But, when i download the libraries from web with Safari and try to open them once downloaded, then everything works fine, so it seems that the libraries are uploaded with no errors but you can't open them in the local iCloud Drive folder, you have to download them from web to get them to work. ( or drag them to a local folder as you said, and repair them )

     

    This is no good Apple...no good.

     

    Anyway thanks again Leonie, i restored them from Time Machine so its all good. But i do hope Apple finds a better solution to this.

  • by léonie,Helpful

    léonie léonie Oct 29, 2015 7:13 AM in response to Jorney
    Level 10 (107,185 points)
    iCloud
    Oct 29, 2015 7:13 AM in response to Jorney

    Instead of creating a zip file, create a disk image. 

    • Move the Photos Library into a folder.
    • Launch Disk Utility, then use the command "File > New Image > Image from Folder" to create a disk image with read/write permissions.
    • Move the Disk Image to iCloud Drive.
    • Once the image has been uploaded double-click it to mount it. Work with the Library, then quit Photos again, dismount the disk image again.

     

    It will be terribly slow, but the Photos Libraries I tested survived being used from a disk image.

    And it will only work for small libraries. iCloud Drive has a file size limit 15GB anyway.

  • by Jorney,

    Jorney Jorney Oct 29, 2015 7:15 AM in response to léonie
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 29, 2015 7:15 AM in response to léonie

    Thats one solution yes but its just too much hassle, while we wait for a better solution ill just save my libraries locally, and trust Time Machine to do the job.

  • by léonie,

    léonie léonie Oct 29, 2015 7:33 AM in response to Jorney
    Level 10 (107,185 points)
    iCloud
    Oct 29, 2015 7:33 AM in response to Jorney
    and trust Time Machine to do the job.

    iCloud Drive is not a backup anyway, because any change will update across all devices. So you cannot restore a document that you deleted from iCloud Drive, unless you have a tTime mAchine Backup or other kind of backup as well.