iPhoto '08 photo library corrupted

So this evening, after stopping by Best Buy to pick up a sandisk Multicard reader, I took the time to install it correctly and then I made a MONUMENTAL GAFFE:  In trying to free up a USB Port on my Mac Mini to plug the card reader into, I UNPLUGGED my External Seagate 320 GB hard drive that is home to my iPhoto library. With iPhoto '08 OPEN.

Not good.

Upon restarting my Mac after all of the iLife 08 patches had DL'ed and been installed, iPhoto 08 presented me with the dreaded "gray box with the dotted lines outline" where most of my pictures used to be displayed.

After a bit of Googling this problem, I learned from the Mac Observer that you can hold down "command-option" and double-click the iPhoto 08 icon.  This will result in iPhoto '08 launching with a dialog box that prompts you to select a number of different rebuild and repair options for your thumbnails and your photo library.

Unfortunately for me, none of these options worked for me and nothing I did brought my images back into iPhoto.  Now the images appear to still be on the external Seagate, so I should be able to ferret them out and get them re-imported into iPhoto '08.  It was nearing 10:30 P.M. last nigt when I gave up the ghost and decided to call it a night and tackle the issue again tomorrow evening after work.

We will see how I fare in my first iPhoto '08 disaster.

Comments

[Joe Brandon]

One thing I learned recently about rebuilding your iphoto '08 library with the "command-option" is a poorly documented (IMHO) quirk.

To be able to rebuild an iPhoto library this way the Start Up drive must have equal or greater space available:

From:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2042

Quote: You will need free space on your startup disk (usually "Macintosh HD") equal to the size of the current iPhoto Library in order to perform the rebuild. Otherwise the rebuild will not complete. :/Quote

The problem I ran into is (when I had less space available) is that iPhoto acted like it did rebuild the database, as I received no error codes. But apparently it was not actually succeeding.

[Ken]

Prop's to Josh for knowing how to fix this issue. That did the trick for me. Your awesome Josh!

[Bob]

Josh,
Thank You, Thank You, Thank You!!!

[Ted Rust]

Thanks goodness for this info! I had initially tried to reselect the iPhoto album using the "hold down option and start iPhoto" method. Because of the orphaned directory in the /Volumes location, I was tricked into thinking I was opening the actual iPhoto album ... when in fact I was opening the shell of an album created by iPhoto after my HD disappeared.

Thank you thank you thank you!!!

[Joe]

Josh's comment worked! If you do see an iPhoto library in the /Volumes folder, save it somewhere else! For me, it contained images that I recently imported, but weren't incorporated in the main library.

[mac4308]

AMAZING!!!! Same exact thing happened to me. External firewire HD got disconnected while in iPhoto '08. This technique worked great. Thank You.

[Josh]

Just a clarification... Only delete the orphaned folders in /Volumes that have the same name as your external disk, do not any other directories.

Also, remember to always back up, consider if your 320GB hard drive failed instead of just being unplugged. This is a real possibility as a single hard drive is not redundant/reliable. Also, your disk does not need to fail to loose your data. Consider accidentally deleting an important folder, or an unwieldy program corrupting or deleting files; this is easily just as destructive as any hard drive failure.

Burn anything that you value out to a DVD often.

[Josh]

I have had similar issues in the past as I store my wife's iphoto library on a network server. I've noticed that when a volume (disk) is detached while in use that OSX will not delete the mount point on the disk. The next time the disk is connected a new folder with the name of the disk and a "-1" is created. My network server share is called media so a media-1 would be created.

This causes iPhoto to actually create a new - empty - iPhoto library in the old location which is now just a folder on your boot disk and not a mount point to an external volume. That is why it was so quick to run the rebuild command, it actually did rebuild the iPhoto library, it was just empty.

Try this to fix the problem:

Close all of your programs and eject your external drive and detach it then go to where OSX creates the mount points. These mount points are found in the /Volumes directory on your boot disk. You can get to this folder from the Finder's Go menu "Go to Folder" option.

You should see a shortcut with the name of your boot disk and perhaps one or more folders with the name of your external drive. Now that your external drive is disconnected these folders should be empty; check them to make sure. Once you are sure there is not anything important in those directories drag the folders to the recycle bin and empty it. You will need to be logged in as the administrator account to do this.

Now plug your disk in and you should see a new directory created in /Volumes with the name of your external drive. Now start up iPhoto and see if it pulls up your iPhoto library.