Where have the iPhotos gone?!?!
February 15, 2006 9:42 PM Subscribe
The iPhoto Library folder on an iBook is gone. Vanished. Nowhere to be found. Where did it go? What can we do?
My girlfriend clicked to open iPhoto tonight on her G4 iBook running OSX 10.3, and it first asked if we wanted to use iPhoto to import photos from cameras (none connected), as if it were starting up for the first time. Then it said it couldn't find the library, and asked if we would like to try to find it. It's not anywhere on the computer that we can see, we've determined, after exhaustive searching. Not the trash, even. I checked out the usual suspect folders in terminal, but nothing was there either. Her Pictures folder (Macintosh HD --> Users --> username --> Pictures) is there, as well as several subfolders she had created in "Pictures", but "iPhoto Library" is no longer present.
Then I tried going into Disk Utility and verifying permissions, and the program hung in the process. At that point we stopped and backed up everything else valuable. I'm assuming that her gigabytes worth of non-backed-up photos (yeah... I know...) are gone, but maybe someone can suggest some way they're not? Assuming they are gone, what would have caused just that folder to bite it? I feel like a hard-drive problem (indicated by the permissions-fixing issue) would not have been so specific as to kill one folder and its subsidiaries. Someone, please help. At least let us know that this is/isn't a common problem and if there's anyway to at least *try* to find the lost folders and data.
My girlfriend clicked to open iPhoto tonight on her G4 iBook running OSX 10.3, and it first asked if we wanted to use iPhoto to import photos from cameras (none connected), as if it were starting up for the first time. Then it said it couldn't find the library, and asked if we would like to try to find it. It's not anywhere on the computer that we can see, we've determined, after exhaustive searching. Not the trash, even. I checked out the usual suspect folders in terminal, but nothing was there either. Her Pictures folder (Macintosh HD --> Users --> username --> Pictures) is there, as well as several subfolders she had created in "Pictures", but "iPhoto Library" is no longer present.
Then I tried going into Disk Utility and verifying permissions, and the program hung in the process. At that point we stopped and backed up everything else valuable. I'm assuming that her gigabytes worth of non-backed-up photos (yeah... I know...) are gone, but maybe someone can suggest some way they're not? Assuming they are gone, what would have caused just that folder to bite it? I feel like a hard-drive problem (indicated by the permissions-fixing issue) would not have been so specific as to kill one folder and its subsidiaries. Someone, please help. At least let us know that this is/isn't a common problem and if there's anyway to at least *try* to find the lost folders and data.
If you're lucky the folder moved somewhere and is intact, but just not in where you [and iPhoto] want it to be. So a search for jpg files in finder and hopefully you'll see a bunch of images. See what folder they are in move them back to where they should be. Then open iPhoto while holding down the option key and it will rebuild your library.
One time I accidentally moved my Documents folder into the Movies folder by dragging the icon over each other in Finder while not paying attention to what I was doing. I didn't notice until the next day and nearly crapped my pants. But I did the search described above and found a word doc and traced them all to the Movies folder.
Now my home folder is backed up to an external drive weekly. Nothing like losing irreplaceable stuff to scare you into backups.
posted by birdherder at 6:20 AM on February 16, 2006
One time I accidentally moved my Documents folder into the Movies folder by dragging the icon over each other in Finder while not paying attention to what I was doing. I didn't notice until the next day and nearly crapped my pants. But I did the search described above and found a word doc and traced them all to the Movies folder.
Now my home folder is backed up to an external drive weekly. Nothing like losing irreplaceable stuff to scare you into backups.
posted by birdherder at 6:20 AM on February 16, 2006
Response by poster: Yeah, I searched for *.jpg and *.ivc (suggested by some newsgroups I found), and found none of them. Unfortunately. Thanks for the suggestions, though. On the upshot, I see regular backups in my girlfriend's future.
posted by The Michael The at 10:16 AM on February 16, 2006
posted by The Michael The at 10:16 AM on February 16, 2006
Get hold of DiskWarrior and see if it can rebuild the directories?
Start up with Apple-S held down and run "fsck -y" (it will tell you to do this anyway)?
posted by AmbroseChapel at 11:38 AM on February 16, 2006
Start up with Apple-S held down and run "fsck -y" (it will tell you to do this anyway)?
posted by AmbroseChapel at 11:38 AM on February 16, 2006
Oh, and how about trying the command-line "find" as in
posted by AmbroseChapel at 11:52 AM on February 16, 2006
sudo find / -name jpg. You never know, it might find something that the system find doesn't.posted by AmbroseChapel at 11:52 AM on February 16, 2006
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[fingers crossed]
posted by educatedslacker at 6:16 AM on February 16, 2006