Automatic reconnect to iPhoto library on NAS attached to Time Capsule

My iPhoto library is too big for my MacBook Air (I admit, I bought the one with the small solid state memory), so I had to move it to a Synology DiskStation NAS (Network Attached Storage) connected to the TimeCapsule. This works pretty well, but everytime I restart my MacBook the connection to the iPhoto library is lost and I have to re-establish it manually (by indicating the path to the NAS.
Is there a way to store this path, so iPhoto automatically re-establishes the connection?
Thanks for your help!

You will want to check on this in the iPhoto forum as well, but the experts over there advise against locating the iPhoto libary on a network drive.
Access is much slower on the network drive and this increases the chance of an error when iPhoto is writing to the library. An error like this can corrupt the entire library, rendering it useless.
You won't like this answer, but the best alternative by far is to attach a USB or Firewire drive directly to the computer, then move the iPhoto library to that drive.
Then Time Machine will back up both your Mac and the hard drive if you set this up in Time Machine Options.

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Accidently wiped i-tunes library, i-mac attached to time capsule

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Photos did not automatically open my iPhoto library

When I opened Photos for the first time, it did not automatically import my iPhoto library.
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You don't import your iPhoto Library, you open it in Photos.
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iPhoto Library is essentially a large datafile in which your photos are stored. iPhoto is an application you use to do things with the photos stored in the datafile. If you backup iPhoto Library then you have backed up all the photos stored in the library. It's iPhoto that links you to all those photos stored in iPhoto Library. All you need do is to copy iPhoto Library to a backup drive. If you are doing regular backups, then you are already making a copy of the iPhoto Library on the backup drive.

Moved my iTunes library to my new 2TB time capsule, now iTunes can't find the Time Capsule.

Had my iTunes library on my older 1TB Time Capsule. Just bought a 2TB Time Capsule. Moved all the music from the old to the new. But, iTunes tells me now it can't find the server. I've checked the location of the library on the iTunes preferences, to point iTunes to my server. I keep getting an error message that iTunes can't find my server. I've already added the folder on the server to my login preferences, like it was with the older Time Capsule.
I did everything exactly as before but now iTunes can't find my Time Capsule.
Should I have just pointed the login to the server and not the exact folder? I've been working on the solution for an hour now.. Please, can someone here help me?

What happens when you try to sync the iphone to the new computer?

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i just purchased a new 21.5 iMac and would like to copy my iPhoto from my old iMac's time capsule can anyone help me ?

You might consider restoring to factory specs, as detailed in the booklet that shipped witht the machine, using the Setup Assistant on first boot, and then reinstalling those new programs. i've not moved pictures, so you could always give that a shot.

Sharing iTunes library between two Macs on Time Capsule

Hi there
I've just about persuaded my fiancee to get a MacBook, which would give us a mac-only household. If I got a Time Capsule, could we share an iTunes library? We each have an iPod and it would seem like a pain to have to recreate two entire libraries on the Time Capsule, much of which would be the same music.
I'm also assuming we could both use the TC as wireless Time Machine backup for our Macs - is this correct?
Finally, does anyone have a view on the likely range of TC relative to a standard Linksys 802.11g wireless router? The Linksys doesn't quite reach to the other end of my apartment and I'm wondering if the TC is likely to be better.
Very many thanks in advance.

Hello
You will run into pain. I just tried every found solution on Internet. Whatever you will do, it ends up in a hack. Fact is: iTunes administer your library only local. You CAN share your iTunes library on one Mac by menu settings in a network, BUT the Mac sharing its iTunes library MUST run all the time you want to listen to music from shared iTunes library even if the shared library (music files) is on the Time Capsule. It even wont work turn on "Wake up on LAN activity". The shared library will only be available as long as the Mac sharing its iTunes library is up and iTunes opened. That way it makes no big sense to have the music files in library physically on your Time Capsule. Another problem might come up when you stop listening shared iTunes library: As soon as the sharing Mac goes into StandBy mode (time depending) you can't access its library again. Standby must be stopped.
The other "solution" is also to have the whole library on a shared drive (Time Capsule) and to import it on both Macs. You will run quickly into Sync problems, beside its a pain to administer the song library that way: You have to import further songs twice, on both Macs to hear them on every one.
And of course, there are third pary hacks around nobody really wants to use.
After implementing Time Machine into Lepoard Apple wanted to make money out of it and offered Time Capsule mainly for storing data and backups (what both works great, also WLAN works fine).
I hope Apple will find a way in iTunes not to handle the music libraries so restrictive, so it can be accessed f.e. on Time Capsule while the Mac sharing its library must not run all the time.
Hope I could help.
Message was edited by: Tayger

Does Time Capsule back up everything on my computer? If I inadvertently delete photos from iPhoto can they be retrieved from Time Capsule?

Does Time Capsule back up everything on my computer? If I inadvertently delete photos from iPhoto can they be retrieved from Time Capsule?

About TM "Backup Drive is Full"
Alert TM only deletes older files if they have been deleted from the source and when TM needs space on the backup drive for a new incremental backup. Time Machine "thins" it's backups; hourly backups over 24 hours old, except the first of the day; those "daily" backups over 30 days old, except the first of the week. The weeklies are kept as long as there's room.
So, how long a backup file remains depends on how long it was on your Mac before being deleted, assuming you do at least one backup per day. If it was there for at least 24 hours, it will be kept for at least a month. If it was there for at least a week, it will be kept as long as there's room.
Note, that on a Time Capsule the sparsebundle grows in size as needed, but doesn't shrink. Thus, from the user's view of the TC it appears that no space has been freed, although there may be space in the sparsebundle.
Once TM has found it cannot free up enough space for a new backup it reports the disk is full. You can either erase the backup drive and start your backups anew or replace the drive with a larger drive.
Also, see Pondini's Time Machine FAQ

Sharing iPhoto Library on NAS

I have a synology NAS on which I have my iPhoto Libraries (multiple libraries, one for each year). I have both a macbook and a mac mini, both running os x 10.6.8 and both running Iphoto 11 (Version 9.2.3). I am only able to access the Iphoto libraries from my macbook for some reason. I cannot access them using my mac mini (I get the error "The iPhoto Library is locked, on a locked disk or you do not have permissions to make changes to it"). Also, when I try to access them with the mac mini, the libraries show up as folders, not as Iphoto icons/library files. Anyone have any idea why this is happening? I've turned on sharing as well, which doesn't seem to help (the library doesn't show up in the source list on the mac mini). I have also made sure the permissions on the library file/folder are open to everyone on my network.

A NAS is not a suitable environment for an iPhoto Library.
iPhoto needs to have the Library sitting on disk formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Users with the Library sitting on disks otherwise formatted regularly report issues including, but not limited to, importing, saving edits and sharing the photos.
All of the symptoms you report are caused by having the Libaries on an inappropriately formatted disk.
You're lucky it opens with one of your machines. At any point it may stop.

Installed iPhoto library on NAS external HDD - now I cannot access it.Help.

I initially had no problems with accessing photos from iPhoto but now when I open iPhoto I get a message "The photo library needs to be upgraded to work with this version of iPhoto." and then "Your photo library is damaged or unreadable and cannot be opened.Please restore from a backup."
I cannot even see the individual files when I access the share on the NAS drive whether I mount it as smb or afp.
Any way to recover my photos?

Simon
Try these in order - from best option on down...
1. Do you have an up-to-date back up? If so, try copy the library6.iphoto file from the back up to the iPhoto Library (Right Click -> Show Package Contents) allowing it to overwrite the damaged file.
2. Download iPhoto Library Manager and use its rebuild function. This will create a new library based on data in the albumdata.xml file. Not everything will be brought over - no slideshows, books or calendars, for instance - but it should get all your albums back.
3. If neither of these work then you'll need to create and populate a new library.
To create and populate a new library:
Note this will give you a working library with the same Events and pictures as before, however, you will lose your albums, keywords, modified versions, books, calendars etc.
In the iPhoto Preferences -> Events Uncheck the box at 'Imported Items from the Finder'
Move the iPhoto Library to the desktop
Launch iPhoto. It will ask if you wish to create a new Library. Say Yes.
Go into the iPhoto Library (Right Click -> Show Package Contents) on your desktop and find the Originals folder. From the Originals folder drag the individual Event Folders to the iPhoto Window and it will recreate them in the new library.
When you're sure all is well you can delete the iPhoto Library on your desktop.
In the future, in addition to your usual back up routine, you might like to make a copy of the library6.iPhoto file whenever you have made changes to the library as protection against database corruption.
Regards
TD

ITunes can't sync with iPhoto Library on NAS-Drive

As I have a lot of pictures and want to have them in a save place (RAID) i transfered the iPhoto Library to my NAS-Drive and told iPhoto to use the new location.
iPhoto works great with this setting - but when I try to sync my iPod Touch or iPhone with the Photo-Lib all I get is an empty Library. I don't want to sync with a disk-folder, but the iPhoto-Library to use the "Sync folder"-Option!
When i set the "Sync Pictures with..."-Feature at the Photos-Tab to "iPhoto" it shows an empty library ("no photos"). When I create a new (second) iPhoto-Lib at the default location (inside user folder) it works fine.
Why doesn't use iTunes the CURRENT LOCATION of the Photo-Library instead of using some STUPID DEFAULT PATH?! Who writes Software like this?! And the most important question: HOW CAN I PATCH THAT?!
An Alias of the iPhoto Library in the default-location doesn't work - so what's next?!
Any suggestions welcome!
Greetings from Germany
Thomas
PS: Spelling of locations, menues and so on are roughly translated from my german os version...

It is not of any help but have exactly the same issue. Called one of our local radio Tech Shows (The Tech Guy, with Leo Leporte) and for what it is worth his only answer was that it was a bug. He noted that apparently i-Tunes was not looking at i-Photo for the library location but rather, as you have noted, only looks in the default location.
Be interested if you get this solved or come up with another work around that does not require my library to be in the default directory.
As you noted i-Photo is happy it is just the sync with i-Tunes, it just doesn't work,
Chuck Queen

Copying large iPhoto library to NAS drive - why is it so difficult?

I have a 2009 iMac, and a large iPhoto library (about 15000 images, circa 90 GB in size). I am trying to transfer the library from the iMac's hard drive to a 3TB Western Digital NAS drive (connected via Gigabit Ethernet) that I've just bought, and it's a nightmare.
I've tried a variety of different approaches - dragging and dropping the iPhoto Library package file onto the pictures directory of the new drive, just exporting the images contained in the 'Masters' subdirectory of the package file, and now using iPhoto Library Manager to attempt to pull the images from my current library into a new iPhoto library that I've created on the new drive. Each way seems to be incredibly lengthy - not just several hours, or even overnight (which I'm prepared for), but days and days - with the iPhoto Library Manager approach the import had been running for about 24 hours and was less than a third of the way through before iPhoto crashed and it stalled.
What is more, I also seem to be unable to delete any of the incomplete package files from the directory on the new drive - again, the progress bar just sits there reading 'Deleting 1 file' and doesn't really do anything. The new drive is formatted as Mac Share, and I can otherwise connect to it and browse through the various directories on there, save small files to it etc, without a problem.
What am I doing wrong? Many thanks for any suggestions.
S

Hi Terence, have read a few of your posts in similar threads this morning and am v relieved I did as I was definitely going to do this all wrong!
Having read your advice on referenced libraries, multiplie libraries, and NAS (ie all being bad) I have come up with the following planned approach for my situation but I would like to run it by you if thats ok?
I don't think I am particularly unusual in my scenario - I am an amateur user who has a personal photo lirbary from the last 10 years and expects it to grow pretty darn big in the future given we now seem to take 100 photos a month since having baby last year!
It already takes up 60GB (50%) of my SSD and so it has to go somewhere...the question is where...
However, where I think i may be less usual is that I don't really use events and additional tagging, I just like iPhoto as a viewer, organiser and slideshow.
From your advice to date I now understand that:
- I can't have my library on my NAS (had been plan 1!)
- Referenced libraries are strongly discouraged (plan 2)
- Using multiple lirbaries to split it down is also discouraged (plan 3, although less beneficial given none of them can go on NAS).
- I should use an ext local HD connected to my laptop when I need to access my photos. (should therefore be plan A but....)
The problem I have though is that using a local ext HD is the least appreciated option by my wife as she hates things being plugged into the laptop in the evening when she kidnaps the laptop for reading her forums, and will likely annoy me if I need to keep getting it from a cupboard, and can't stay in the living room with the little one roaming around and grabing everything gadget I own!
Plus, the most likely value in old photos is going to be that one unexepcted moment in the future when I want to bring one up to show a friend and I am away from the house....
SO, what I am thinking of doing is splitting the situation in 2:
- most of my organising, deleting, managing etc as well as obviously my importing, will happen within the first 6 months of taking a photo. Therefore I will have an iPhoto managed library for that. It will live on my local SSD and all will be good.
- and I will export all older photos to my NAS where they will the live from then on (and continue to move the 6 month expiry photos to this each month or two depending on size constraints). I will try and use events in iPhoto to organise everything before I do this, so that the folders will be useful and useable outside of iphoto on the NAS if I ever need to find anything to view.
- I will then re-import these photos into a second library in iPhoto so I keep the slideshow and viewing capabilities (not sure whether this needs to be a separate library, but probably makes things easier for me to see and manage).
If the links in this ever do get broken with iPhoto I am not sure this matters for me? - I could just re-import each folder and select the event name as the folder name. As mentioned, I don't tend to go into minute detail with events, so there won't be that many (ok, in 30 years time this may be more painful...but I imaging by then we will all be machines and there wil be a new way!)
And if I find I also want access to my <6month photos on NAS as well then I will keep a duplicate export of that on NAS (not managed as a libary within iPhoto) and continue to overwrite it with an export each 1-4 weeks depending on how I much I use things.
What do you think? Have you seen anyone take this approach, and can you see any obvious pitfalls from your experience that I am still missing?
Your advice is much appreciated,
cheers
Jon
A final point is that I have lots of photos from my pre-Mac days and these need to be brought together and consolidated into iPhoto and organised before I do my split. I was going to buy iphoto library manager as apprently it is good at finding the duplicates (I will have 1000's due to lazy copying discipline when i was younger) and I was going to use it for managing libraries anyway, but it is $30 and now I don't need all its functions I think I will just use a bespoke programme for finding any duplicates. I don't want to hijack the thread for this, but any recommendations would obviously be appreciated!

IPhoto on External Hard Drive Attached to Time Capsule

Hi,
I can't seem to find the answer to this question on any of the forums.
I currently have a Mac Mini, MacBook Air and MacBook Pro. I have two iPhoto libraries, one on my MacBook Pro and one on my Mac Mini. I use the Pro as my primary library for editing the photo's and then using a USB stick transfer the photo's to my Mac Mini which is attached to my television as I use it as a media centre.
What I want to do is have just the one library which can be displayed on my Mac Mini and editied using my two laptops.
I am thinking of using an External Hard Drive attached to my Time Capsule and then use this to store one iPhoto library that I can access on the network on all three of my computers.
Is this possible to do?

I read your question a while ago and since nobody has jumped in .. let me have a go..
Yes, I should say it is possible to have your iphoto library on the TC.
It is older post but still should work.
http://gigaom.com/apple/using-time-capsule-as-a-media-drive/
Second point... don't do it.
Here is why..
1. Extremely slow. http://www.anandtech.com/show/4577/airport-extreme-5th-gen-and-time-capsule-4th- gen-review-faster-wifi-/7
Much worse than the internal drive.
2. More importantly .. there is zero backup. If you do want to backup, you have to drag the files off the USB disk, across the network and back onto a drive connected to your computer.. Net gain.. zero.. you still have to have a disk connected to a computer.
Use the Mac Mini, a drive connected by firewire is hugely faster. Even usb drive direct from the computer over the network is faster.
And you can set it to backup via Time Machine. Remember all files on single hard disk will one day be lost.. get ready for that day.

Sharing a single iphoto library and backing up with time machine

Alright,
I want to share my iPhoto library between several users on my Mac. I have found an Apple article that explains how to set up a disk image to store the iPhoto library in. This article is at
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1198
However, implementing as described in this article has a very painful disadvantage described below:
I back up Mac's my hard drive to an external disk using Time Machine. Once I've created a disk image to hold my iphoto library, time machine will now back up the entire iphotolibrary.dmg file each time I've added or changed any photos. Now I have a lot of photos, and my iphoto library takes up 27GB even when put on a sparse-disk-image. So that means that each time I add or change even just one photo, time machine has to write a >27 GB file to the external hard drive which contains my backup. Obviously this is a problem and will fill up even my 1.5TB drive pretty quickly if this continues.
I came up with an idea on how to solve this. I decided that I'd exclude the disk image that contains the common iPhoto library from the time machine backup and create a second library in the home directory of one of the users on my machine. Then each time that I added or edited photos I'd use a syncing application to sync the iPhoto library on the disk image and the iPhoto library in the user's directory. This way the iPhoto library in the user's directory would be backed up incrementally by Time Machine in the normal way, and Time Machine wouldn't fill up the backup disk with huge disk image files that have only changed slightly.
The problem with my new approach is that the snycing program that I'm using (Synk by Decimus Software) has some difficulty syncing the packaged directories like that used for iPhoto libraries. I get all sorts of conflicts and I'm worried that the file syncs will be unreliable and lead to instabilities and data loss.
An ideal solution would be exclude the disk image file from the Time Machine backup and then add the mounted disk image to the backup. I think that Time Machine would then correctly leave the large 27GB file alone and only do incremental backups of my iPhoto library. But I can't see any way to add mounted disk images to the Time Machine backup.
Thanks in advance for any help that any of you can provide.

This is a little more simple that all that.
For iPhoto 09 (version 8.0.2) and later:
If you want the other user to have the same access to the library as you: to be able to add, edit, organise, keyword etc.
Quit iPhoto in both accounts. Move the Library to the Users / Shared Folder
(You can also use an external HD set to ignore permissions, a Disk Image or even partition your Hard Disk.)
In each account in turn: Double click on the Library to open it. (You may be asked to repair the Library Permissions.) From that point on, this will be the default library location. Both accounts will have full access to the library, in fact, both accounts will 'own' it.
However, there is a catch with this system and it is a significant one. iPhoto is not a multi-user app., it does not have the code to negotiate two users simultaneously writing to the database, and trying will cause db corruption. So only one user at a time, and back up, back up back up.
No need for dmgs at all. No need for Syncing software.
Note: No Syncing software can run on an iPhoto Library. Period. There is none that can parse the Library database. Attempting to sync two Libraries will lead to damage to at least one of them.
Regards
TD

Huge iPhoto Library - 2 External Hard Drive + Time Machine

I have a massive iPhoto library on my macbook pro and am adding about 10GB in photos per year. I currently have an external hard drive used as a backup only for Time Machine.
Is it best to purchase an additional hard drive and run iPhoto directly from the external drive? Would this enable me to delete the iPhoto library from my macbook and then do a daily time machine backup for the macbook and for the external drive? Is this possible, or is their a better way to go about this?
Thanks,

I bought a new MacBook Pro in late august this year, and since then I`ve had some serious problems backing up my iPhoto library. I have searched severals forums in both english and norwegian, with no luck. But today, I found this... http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4116
Thank you so much, Pondini. You made my day
Kind regards, Erlend.

Automatic reconnect to iPhoto library on NAS attached to Time Capsule

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