Can I recover photos lost from an iPhoto library that was on an external HD?

I had about 2,000 photos on my iPhoto library that was being stored on an external HD that is plugged into my AirPort Extreme base station 2TB.  Today, I imported another 550 photos from my iPhone to that library and now all that seems to be there is the latest iPhone import.  I can't find the old photos anywhere - they seem to have vanished. 
I tried running iPhoto Library Manager's rebuild function but it only comes up with the 550 photos I imported today. 

You can try a file recovery application like File Salvage - you can download a free trial and it will scan the disk for you and tell you with might be recoverable. Actual recovery will require that you purchase the app. There may be many files with the same or similar names. Always recover the largest file size.
There are other such apps. Search on Macupdate or the App Store

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    Sara
    Welcome to the Apple Discussions.
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    Look there for a Folder called 'Import' or 'Importing'.
    Drag it to the Desktop. *Make no other changes*.
    Start iPhoto. Does that help?
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    Welcome to the Apple Discussions.
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    what i have now is a lot of jpg-files in my google drive, size of 33-34k - so i think i've got the thumbnails there.
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    Go to your Pictures Folder and find the iPhoto Library there. Right (or Control-) Click on the icon and select 'Show Package Contents'. A finder window will open with the Library exposed.
    Look there for a Folder called 'Import' or 'Importing'.
    Drag it to the Desktop. *Make no other changes*.
    Start iPhoto. Does that help?
    If it does then look inside that folder on your desktop. Does it contain anything you want? If not you can trash the folder.
    Regards
    TD

  • How can I restore my library that was erased off external drive....

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  • Can I recover photos lost during an import error

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    MediaRECOVER will do the job for you. You can download and run it in demo mode (it will allow 1 image to be recovered in demo mode) to see all of the photos that it can find to recover before you commit to purchase. I recovered 196 files from a card that I had intentionally deleted and then discovered that I shouldn't have.
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    OT
    P.S. Read and heed Peter's recommendations regarding future deletions.

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