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Yet another balls up from the apple mega machine?
Sorry to hear the loss, and thanks for the heads up. I too have been thinking of backing up for a while but never got round to doing it...this has changed things.
Imagine my delight when I received my new iMac Retina 4.0Ghz on Thursday. My photos looked amazing on the new screen.
Now imagine my horror last night when iPhoto forced me to update from 9.5 to 9.6 and completed destroyed my iPhoto library. Because I've been between machines for a few months waiting for the new iMac, I didn't have a back up of my iPhoto library which sits on an external HD. I know this was really, really, really, stupid and it's something I was going to do in the next couple of days once I got my new computer working.
But now as a consequence I have lost around 26,000 pictures from the last 10 years :(
When it all started going wrong last night I tried all of the iPhoto tools to repair and rebuild the library. Today I have tried using the iPhoto Library Manager software to rebuild the library. It looked for a while like the photos were still there because my iPhoto library was showing 246GB, but that's suddenly now reduced to 3.5GB, so I assume the pictures have been eaten.
I managed to save around 1000-1500 pictures which seem to be a random collection from across the library and I have around 300 of my favourite images of my wife and kids on a memory card in a digital photo frame, so there is a tiny saving grace.
From the research I've done online it seems this has happened to a few people while updating to version 9.6, so I just wanted to warn others to save the pain I've gone through (not to mention the tears from the wife). I'm sure for the majority the update will be fine, just make sure you have a back up before you update.
Please don't give me a lecture for not backing up my pictures, I know it was a huge mistake and one I've had to learn the hard way. I just hope I can help others avoid the same mistake.
Yet another balls up from the apple mega machine?
Sorry to hear the loss, and thanks for the heads up. I too have been thinking of backing up for a while but never got round to doing it...this has changed things.
Thanks for the heads up! I'm sorry too hear about the trouble. I suggest taking the computer to a pro, I bet most of the pics can still be salvaged.
Always have a backup on iCloud or a HD regardless of Operating System, no point blaming Apple as 99% of the time its fine
RIAC
Stop using the computer, and get a copy of Prosoft Engineering's Data Rescue. There are other ones available as well, which might also be worth looking at.
All your photos were (are) in a folder called Masters, which you'll find if you select Show Package Contents from the right click contextual menu, after navigating to iPhoto Library in User>Pictures folder.
You should be able to recover them, as like most deleted files, they're rarely overwritten, only having been removed from the index file.
Thats strange, I updated a short while ago, and my 40k photos are still present.
I did have a look in the masters folder and the originals folder, but they were both empty, which I thought was odd. I'm now looking into a professional data recovery service to see if they can help.Originally Posted by PJ S
I've just had a look at that Prosoft Data Rescue 4 and it looks really good. I think I might give it a go. Thanks for the recommend.
Upgraded here no problem.
Having backups is a lesson we all learn the hard way.
The data recovery software should make a reasonable job of recovering the photographs, I've used similar software to recover photographs from a failed PC hard drive that had lost its File Allocation Table. The photos should be still on the disk, even if not seen by the OS, unless they've all been overwritten which is unlikely as the loss is recent.
I know you didn't want to be told about backups, but have you really not got an older backup to access or have you never backed up in 10 years?
Another problem free upgrade here.
When you look long into an abyss, the abyss looks long into you.........
Was seamless for me too.
I meant that's where the photos are stored, when you add them to iPhoto.
The main thing is that you install the software on the external drive, and use it to also restore the files on to – so make sure you've sufficient space to do so.
OP, worth exploring this surely? I would even take it to professionals and pay the money considering what it is that has been lost.
Really sorry to hear about that - must be painful. It's something that has worried me for a long time. I only recently got rid of an old Windows CPU that had been sitting there al dusty and exposed for years with old photos mostly not backed up. I didn't know for sure until I hooked it up that they were all still ok..but thankfully they were and I backed them up on two separate external hard drives.
Good luck and let us know if you have a happy ending to this story.
It's pretty terrible to lose 10 years worth of photos. It's one of the great risks of digital vs. analogue photography, although digital has the potential to store your original images in multiple locations to guard them against disaster. Look at how many people simply keep all their photos on the memory card in their camera and don't even back that up on a harddisk.
Professional photographers probably use RAID disk arrays and, if they are truly paranoid, some form of off-site backup - physical, not neccessarily the cloud although that seems to be the way everyone is going now. That protects against many kinds of mishap, such as theft, fire or your cat stepping on the Delete key (a friend of mine lost 3 years worth of photos when his PC developed a minor fault not related to the harddisk, but the repair guy simply reformatted it anyway without backing up the data first)... Still, it's all digital and we need electronic gear to read the files. Will we be able to get to our photos 50 years from now if we have not printed them and stuck them in albums?
What gets me in this story is that the disk itself seems to be physically OK but the photo management software has put all the images in some proprietary database which it has subsequently destroyed. It's all well and good to use a photo viewer or image management program to organize your photos so you can search them by date, subject or whatever, but the original JPEGs and/or RAWs should always be stored unaltered and be accessible independent of the photo software. If the program does not allow that, don't use it, pick something else. If an Apple system won't allow you direct access to your valuable images on a disk, kick out the Apple and go PC, Linux or whatever. Your photos are not worth losing over some emotional bond with any brand ecosystem, however nice, easy or beautiful it may be otherwise.
iPhoto and Aperture store photos within their library by default. The library is an OS X package which is basically a folder. The library normally appears as a single icon but when you right click on it you get the option to show package contents. You can then access a folder called Masters which contains the original photos stored as files. Somehow this system has broken for the OP which it shouldn't have.
I use Aperture to store my photos but don't keep them inside the library package. Instead I keep them as referenced files on an external hard disk. You can do the same thing in iPhoto since they share the library file. It is much easier to backup the photos with them stored this way. I can also reference the same photos using Lightroom.
As the OP said you shouldn't perform an upgrade like this without first having a backup. I am completely anal when it comes to backing up my photos. I have them on 3 external hard disks in different locations. I also have them uploaded to two large photo sites (SmugMug and Flickr) and have them backed up to the CrashPlan cloud backup service too. I would hate to lose any of my photos so am very careful with them.
Thanks for the words of advice everyone. I've managed to get back about 5000 of the 27000 pictures, so there is some consolation.
I've turned off the external HD in question and I will take it to a specialist soon. I've spoken to a few and they seem confident they can get the pictures back, but I won't get my hopes up until it happens.
If all else fails I still have the 400 key pictures that I used on my digital photo frame, so not everything would be lost. Plus my Dad is a professional photographer and always takes a million pictures whenever they visit, so things like new born babies etc are well covered from his collection.
I'll let you know if there is a happy ending, but either way I have learnt my lesson and will be thoroughly backing up my pictures from now on.
Exactly what I mean, referenced files instead of inside the library package. 3 external harddisks is even a bit more anal than I am. I have two with all my photos of any importance, and selective files on other externals. I have just ordered another terabyte-class external so I can have 2 identical backups. The cloud is a bit of a hassle if you have half a terabyte of files to upload from a rural setting with just 256 kbit/sec upload speed... I'll look into Crashplan, didn't know them.
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