I lost 3000 photos after transferring them to iPhoto

December 3, 2015 6:15 PM

I had 3000 photos on my iPhone 5C. I recently purchased a used MacBook Air from a friend and I've been letting my daughter use it to watch Netflix. The other night, I did something pretty idiotic and transferred all of the photos to iPhoto, then deleted them on my phone. Then, the battery died. Upon rejuvenation, iPhoto was empty. Its a Macbook Air 13" 2012, 500 GB HD, 8 GB Ram, 2 GHz

It was dumb because I don't really know how to use the Mac at all. I noticed that I was logged in as a "guest user", the admin is still set to someone I've never heard of, maybe that doesn't matter.

I read some online forums and tried a few things that were recommended, like relaunching the app holding down the control and command key, then selecting some rebuild options.

I then assumed that restoring my iPhone from backup would repopulate my old photos, but I'm reading that this may not be the case because they have been deleted from my phone after I transferred them to iPhoto. Searches on the net reveal that iPhoto errors are common?

Has anyone out there successfully recovered their iPhoto libraries? Is this a job for a pro? I strangely don't feel panicked even though almost 4 years of my daughter's life were recorded in those photos, but I really want them back. I understand that this may not be possible.

So, next question: what kind of habits do I need to employ to prevent this from ever happening again?

posted by bright and shiny to Computers & Internet (9 answers total)

The guest user contents are deleted when you logout or restart. That is by design. That is how you lost the photos; you didn't realize that the entire contents of the guest user's folders are transient.

Restoring your iPhone should restore your photos. Unless you were backing it up to the guest account.
posted by blob at 6:22 PM on December 3, 2015 [3 favorites]

...I noticed that I was logged in as a "guest user", the admin is still set to someone I've never heard of, maybe that doesn't matter. ....

Who were you logged in as when you transferred the photos? "guest"? If so, the photos were deleted when you logged out... unless they've been overwritten since, you would need a file recovery service/tool to get them back.
posted by HuronBob at 6:23 PM on December 3, 2015

So, next question: what kind of habits do I need to employ to prevent this from ever happening again?

Backup. And don't mess around with stuff you care about on something you don't understand.

Sympathy, dude/tte. We've all been there.
posted by Sebmojo at 6:38 PM on December 3, 2015 [2 favorites]

Doesn't your phone automatically backup your pictures to the cloud? iCloud? Google Photos? Flickr?

Even without online backup, I would imagine a techy friend should be able to recover them from either the phone or laptop without too much trouble.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 6:50 PM on December 3, 2015 [1 favorite]

Also, don't use the guest account unless you've got a specific reason to.
posted by adamrice at 7:17 PM on December 3, 2015

Have you checked the "recently deleted" album in the photos app on your phone?
posted by JenMarie at 7:26 PM on December 3, 2015 [3 favorites]

Do you know where your iPhone backups are? Are you backing up to iCloud or were you backing up to a different computer using iTunes? Try logging in to https://www.icloud.com/ and see if there are any photos there.

Also, while it is true that the Guest user account deletes files automatically when you log out it's likely that most of the data is still recoverable. You should stop using the Macbook immediately (to preserve data from being overwritten) and then use a file recovery program to un-delete the photos.

I have used previous versions of Data Rescue successfully in the past. I see they now have a free version you can use to determine if your files are recoverable before paying.

The open source program Photorec also works very well, but Data Rescue is much more user-friendly.

Please note you must recover the files to a disk other than the one from which you are trying to recover data, like a USB thumb drive or external USB drive.
posted by dweingart at 7:35 PM on December 3, 2015 [2 favorites]

1) DON'T RESTORE YOUR PHONE FROM BACKUP YET. Also, try not to use your computer or phone too much. When files are deleted, often the data is not actually gone on the hard drive, but the operating system / filesystem adjusts its record to say "we can overwrite anything in this area of the hard drive". If you download a lot of files / etc, chances are that you'll actually overwrite over that data.

Data recover software can scan over the hard drive and try to reconstruct files and folders.

2) Check the 'Recently Deleted' album in the photos app, like what JenMarie said.

3) Try iOS recovery software, like this or this. No personal experience, but they seem to have trials that you can at least test to see if you can view files on your iPhone.

4) Try OSX recovery software, like Data Rescue.
posted by suedehead at 9:15 PM on December 3, 2015 [1 favorite]

Guest usertypes suck; they're meant to be used by one-off users who are never returning to the machine.

It's relatively trivial to create a new admin user on a Mac even if you don't know a current one's password, or at least it was within the last couple of OSX versions. Google for ".applesetupdone" plus your OSX version and you'll find something helpful. The gist of it is that you can delete the file that tells OSX that you have done the setup that happens the very first time the computer is turned on. You don't have to run in the day-to-day as an admin user, but you should be some kind of standard user, not a guest user.
posted by Sunburnt at 7:02 AM on December 4, 2015 [1 favorite]