Repairing library lost pictures

Question

Repairing library lost pictures

I was having an issue with Photos (sorting of Moments had pictures not going in the correct order by date despite correct time zone, date, hour, etc.) so I decided to repair my Library. I had 36 667 pictures. When I reopened post repair I had only 8, 650 pictures!!! I went to my iCloud to look at the photos and that was different than the newly deficient library. It had even fewer pictures. I am bringing back my last Photo library from Time Machine but am very uncomfortable about ever using the repair program when launching Photos. Any idea why this would have happened?

Photos-OTHER, OS X El Capitan (10.11.2)

Posted on Sep 27, 2016 11:07 AM

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Answer 1

léonie

Level 10

200,699 points

Sep 27, 2016 11:18 AM in response to William Hooper

Repairing an already damaged library may make it worse. That is why the Photos Help has the message "Important: You should back up your photo library before repairing your library" at the beginning of the help page for repairing. If the problem is bad, it may not be possible to repair the library.

Do you know of any possible reason, what might have damaged the library? Is it on a supported drive? Are you sharing the library between user accounts? Did you use any cleaning applications to save storage on your Mac?

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Answer 2

Sep 28, 2016 5:27 PM in response to léonie

It has taken several days but my library is back. The original problem remains regarding the odd date and time sequence. But all 38,000 pictures are back. When I called Apple they said I needed to bring back my Time Machine library and use that one. My iCloud.com pictures were also deficient in numbers by 25,000 on my MacBookPro. Oddly, the cloud pictures were slightly different by a dozen pictures back in 1970. In any event, I did not erase my library nor restore my backup from Time Machine.

I went to work and opened my MacBookAir. All my 38,000 pictures were there! Oddly, on Safari/icloud.com all 38,000 were also there!

When I got back home and opened my MacBookPro and went to Safari/iCloud.com the pictures were not there.

I know you are going to ask but yes I was using the same login information.

I called Second Tier support at Apple. They said they could see the 38,000 pictures. We went to Photos/Preferences and unchecked the box for PhotoSharing. Then we went to SystemPreferences and logged out of my iCloud account. Rebooted. And reversed the steps.

Two days later my pictures are back and my iCloud looks fine regarding photos on the MacBookPro.

Still cannot understand why my pictures are not in order regarding date and time given same time zone but I can live with that.

Thanks, Leonie!

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