moved iphoto to external drive but lost all master photos

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Level 6

10,424 points

moved iphoto to external drive but lost all master photos

I have several iPhoto libraries, because I kept running out of room on iCloud. I would move the entire iPhoto library from my pictures photo to an external drive, and then delete all photos so I would have more space.

I recently discovered that several of these libraries are "too small". Where they are usually 20-40+ GB, some are as small as 3-7 GB.

When I open these iPhoto libraries using the photos app, I cannot move any images because of errors, and the image is very low quality, like I am looking at a thumbnail instead of the original image.

Are these years of photo lost now? At the time I had to turn off 'download originals to this Mac" because of storage concerns (this computer only has 512Gb and I needed space for app development as part of school)

MacBook Pro 14″, macOS 15.2

Posted on Nov 24, 2024 8:40 PM

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Answer 1

Nov 25, 2024 9:26 AM in response to Gerry Straathof

In one of these Libraries, go to Settings>General

This is from my System Library. Is "Copy Items to the Photos Library" checked? or not?

"Copy" is the default condition, and the Library is called a Managed Library-- meaning Photos keeps track of the picture files. Unchecked is called a Referenced Library, because Photos is expecting to reference picture files in the finder locations that they came from. That would mean that, if you delete those original files, there are no other copies.

If you uncheck "Copy" to make a Referenced Library, then the next Library you create will also be Referenced, unless you change back to Managed. Since the originals were the only files, I'm afraid, if you used Referenced Libraries, that the pictures (except for the little thumbnails) are gone.

There may be larger, though probably not full sized, copies of some of the pictures inside of the Library package. Messing around inside the Library package can irrevocably corrupt the Library-- but if it's worthless, anyway, then you don't have anything to lose. You can look inside the Library, and you might find pictures you can use.

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Answer 2

markwmsn

Level 6

15,935 points

Nov 25, 2024 9:48 PM in response to Gerry Straathof

In addition to the Managed/Referenced Library issue Richard.Taylor described, you have also exposed yourself to another issue. By turning off "Download Originals" (and enabling "Optimize Mac Storage") you created a library that contained some (maybe many) photos with only thumbnails and no originals. It worked fine when it was connected to iCloud Photos, but the copies you made on external volumes would not have that connection and would not have the originals.

If, as you said, you deleted the photos from the live library (and iCloud) after making the external copy that lacked the originals, you would have deleted the only copy of the originals from iCloud.

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Answer 3

cnboyle

Level 1

8 points

Dec 10, 2024 2:14 PM in response to markwmsn

I did the same thing and am trying to follow what you're saying.

If I did, indeed, just copy a bunch of referenced photos (thumbnails) and not the actual photos, how do you copy the iPhoto library so that this doesn't happen? I watched multiple videos and thought just dragging the library and dropping it on my hard drive, would keep that copy as is. No?

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Answer 4

Gerry Straathof Author

Level 6

10,424 points

Dec 10, 2024 2:24 PM in response to cnboyle

First, before anything else, set your iPhoto library to download all masters to this computer (this may take a while. given the size of my library it took several hours)

if your library size in user/photos is on the small size (~6 Gb) given the number of photos (20,000+) then you NEED to do this.

once that is done, copy the ENTIRE library file to an external hard drive. Mine was roughly 80. Gb (you’ve or take 20Gb)

my problem was I had copied photo libraries because I was running out of hard drive space, so I would have had to shuffle more stuff off my hard drive to even be able to do this.

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