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How to force a photos rebuild (not repair) on El Capitan

I had been using photos without an issue in a sparse image for a couple years. I made what I assume to be a mistake in letting Time Machine do a backup at the same time I was attempting to use the photo library, and afterwards when trying to use the library, after a few minutes, I'd get a message saying that the data was corrupt and it had to shut down.


Did a lot of reading and first tried the repair. But at a certain point during the repair, around 10%, it would also say there was corrupt data.


More reading, and it suggested creating a new library and then copying the master and resources folders to it (overwriting the new folders). I did that and it worked, but then shortly afterwards I got the corruption message again.


I decided that it might have something to do with being in the sparse image, since the library size was within a few gig of the image size. I created a new library on the main drive, and did the copy again of the master and resources folders. All the images are present in the master folder.


When I alt command double-click on the library, I get a repair dialog. It never offers a dialog with choices like rebuild. When I repair, the progress meter counts up from 1 to 5%, and then jumps to 100%. The result is no photos in the library, though all are present in the master folder and there is tons of data in the resources folder.


I read that a rebuild will do just that, rather than trying to repair, but I can find no way to have it offer a rebuild.

Photos-OTHER, OS X El Capitan (10.11.6)

Posted on Feb 11, 2017 5:38 PM

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2 replies

Feb 12, 2017 4:40 AM in response to ayendesigns

Photos has only one command to fix a broken library, the "Repair" tool. It is probably the same as the "rebuild" tool in Aperture or iPhoto, since Apple recommends to make a backup before doing a repair. For Aperture and iPhoto the backup has also been suggested, but not for a simple repair, only for a rebuild.


Since there are no other tools to fix the library, try to restore an earlier version from your Time Machine backup. Insome cases it helped to remove the "recovery" folder from the restored library, if the repair failed after restoring from a backup.


You are saying, your library is in a sparse bundle? Are you keeping the Photos Library on a network volume? That is not supported. Try all fixes and repairs to your library while the library is on a locally mounted volume, formatted MacOS Extended (Journaled).

Feb 12, 2017 10:08 AM in response to ayendesigns

When I alt command double-click on the library, I get a repair dialog. It never offers a dialog with choices like rebuild. When I repair, the progress meter counts up from 1 to 5%, and then jumps to 100%. The result is no photos in the library, though all are present in the master folder and there is tons of data in the resources folder.

Give this fix posted by user odysseus:

Well, I've found a solution to the problem where a rebuild causes photos to appear to disappear after a rebuild. Here are the steps.


1 - Quit "Photos

2 - Back up your Photos Library

3 - Control Click on your Photos library and select Show Package Contents from the Contextual menu.

4 - Go into the Resources folder and move the Recovery folder to the Desktop.

4 - Close the Photos Library bundle and double-click it to launch Photos

5 - A new Recovery folder will be created


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How to force a photos rebuild (not repair) on El Capitan

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