Can't repair Photos library. How best to restore from iCloud library?

Question

Can't repair Photos library. How best to restore from iCloud library?

The System Photo Library has become corrupt, and cannot be repaired.

It says "Photos has attempted to repair the library 'Photos Library 2015', but is unable to open it."

I first experienced problems with this library a week ago, and at the time I was able to repair and open the library successfully, but it was missing a months worth of photos.

Given that these were successfully in the iCloud library, I left it to re-sync - but this process repeatedly hung before completion, and now the System Photo Library seems to be irretrievably corrupt.

I have no faces tagged or print projects in the System Photo Library, so I would be happy simply to restore from iCloud.

My plan is to set up a new - empty - Photo Library, and then designate this the System Photo Library.

If I understand this right, the new (empty) System Photo Library will now resync with iCloud, and will copy the entire contents of this library back to my Mac.

Is this correct? Is this the most efficient way to restore my library?

And while I'm here - what's the best way to manage a very large library? I've had my photo library become corrupt three or four times over the last decade, and have found it necessary to split it into single years to prevent this. I neglected this piece of housekeeping at the end of 2015, and now it's happened again… Surely there must be an easier way to handle multi-year image libraries?

Posted on Sep 18, 2016 4:09 AM

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Answer 1

Sep 18, 2016 4:24 AM in response to BrendanDonlon

Is this correct? Is this the most efficient way to restore my library?

Yes, if you don't have a useful back up on your Mac.

And while I'm here - what's the best way to manage a very large library? I've had my photo library become corrupt three or four times over the last decade, and have found it necessary to split it into single years to prevent this. I neglected this piece of housekeeping at the end of 2015, and now it's happened again… Surely there must be an easier way to handle multi-year image libraries?

What do you call a large library, I've never had a corrupt library, I suspect your issues have not been a result of the size of the library but rather something else. Best practice in my experience is to maintain a local back up, I use Time machine, but also have a second back up using a third party back up solution.

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Answer 2

Sep 18, 2016 4:52 AM in response to Winston Churchill

Thanks for that.

I'll start the re-sync from iCloud, so…

In terms of the size of the library - 45gb, according to Finder; and that's just from January 2015 onwards!

My experience with iPhoto was that once the library size exceeded 20-30gb it became unstable and was likely to corrupt… I had hoped maybe Photos was going to be more robust than iPhoto, but obviously not.

I've tried storing the system photo library on the system disc - but found this harder to repair when it corrupted. I then switched to external HDs, but found they were more likely to fail. Then I switched to various forms of RAID (currently a Drobo), which had given me the longest period of failure-free years until now.

I used back-up with Time Machine, but now use a combination of DropBox for most files, and iCloud, for services like Photos. I may now add the System Photo Library to DropBox's tasks as well, just to speed up recovery from the next inevitable failure…

I'm beginning to wonder if there's any purpose in having a local version of the photos library at all, given how much space it takes up and how flakey it becomes…

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Answer 3

Sep 18, 2016 4:57 AM in response to BrendanDonlon

My library is quite small to some others, it is however larger than yours at 70 GB (from the Finder), which tends IMHO to support my earlier statement that your problems may not be related to the size of the library but rather from something else.

I'd see how things go after your rebuild.

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Answer 4

LarryHN

Level 10

106,142 points

Sep 18, 2016 7:22 AM in response to BrendanDonlon

Size is not your problem - my small Photos library is 120 GB and my large one is nearly 800 GB - no problems with either

splitting a library is difficult and unnecessary and makes Photos ability to search much less useful

LN

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Answer 5

léonie

Level 10

200,699 points

Sep 18, 2016 7:24 AM in response to BrendanDonlon

My plan is to set up a new - empty - Photo Library, and then designate this the System Photo Library.

If I understand this right, the new (empty) System Photo Library will now resync with iCloud, and will copy the entire contents of this library back to my Mac.

Is this correct? Is this the most efficient way to restore my library?

That will be the fastest way, since you do have no projects to save and no tagged faces.

Repairing the library or restoring from a backup would result in uploading the library again to iCloud and merging the library into the existing iCloud Library. Simply downloading from iCloud will be faster, since it will save the merging.

There must be another reason for the frequent library corruptions than the size of the library, unless you are running out of storage.

I've tried storing the system photo library on the system disc - but found this harder to repair when it corrupted. I then switched to external HDs, but found they were more likely to fail. Then I switched to various forms of RAID (currently a Drobo), which had given me the longest period of failure-free years until now.

Are your external drives locally mounted or remotely? Accessing the library over a network is not supported.

Have you been running any cleaning applications to save storage? Cleaning applications that have not been written for Photos Library may corrupt the library.

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