Emptying Trash for large iPhoto Library File on HDD not completing

I'm trying to delete an old iPhoto library (over 300GB) and it seems to hang when I try to empty the trash. This is on an external HDD. Any suggestions?

I will request that your query be relocated to the iPhoto forum where knowledgeable iPhoto users will be able to assist you.
Ciao.

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Can't Empty Trash With Large Number of Files

Running OS X 10.8.3
I have a very large external drive that had a Time Machine backup on the main partition. At some point, I created a second partition, then started doing backups on the new partition. On Wed, I finally got around to doing some "housecleaning" tasks I'd been putting off. As part of that, I decided to clean up my external drive. So... I moved the old, unused and unwanted Backups.backupdb that used to be the Time Machine backup, and dragged it to the Trash.
Bad idea.
Now I've spent the last 3-4 days trying various strategies to actually empty the trash and reclaim the gig or so of space on my external drive. Initially I just tried to "Empty Trash", but that took about four hours to count up the files just to "prepare to delete" them. After the file counter stopped counting up, and finally started counting down... "Deleting 482,832 files..." "Deleting 482,831 files..." etc, etc... I decided I was on the path to success, so left the machine alone for 12-14 hours.
When I came back, the results were not what I expected. "Deleting -582,032 files..." What the...?
So after leaving that to run for another few hours with no results, I stopped that process. Tried a few other tools like Onyx, TrashIt, etc... No luck.
So finally decided to say the **** with the window manager, pulled up a terminal, and cd'ed to the .Trash directory for my UID on the USB volume and did a rm -rfv Backups.backupdb
While it seemed to run okay for a while, I started getting errors saying "File not found..." and "Invalid file name..." and various other weird things. So now I'm doing a combination of rm -rfing individual directories, and using the finder to rename/cleanup individual Folders when OSX refuses to delete them.
Has anyone else had this weird overflow issue with deleting large numbers of files in 10.8.x? Doesn't seem like things should be this hard...

I'm not sure I understand this bit:
If you're on Leopard 10.5.x, be sure you have the "action" or "gear" icon in your Finder's toolbar (Finder > View > Customize Toolbar). If there's no toolbar, click the lozenge at the upper-right of the Finder window's title bar. If the "gear" icon isn’t in the toolbar, selectView > Customize Toolbar from the menubar.
Then use the Time Machine "Star Wars" display: Enter Time Machine by clicking the Time Machine icon in your Dock or select the TM icon in your Menubar.
And this seems to defeat the whole purpose:
If you delete an entire backup, it will disappear from the Timeline and the "cascade" of Finder windows, but it will not actually delete the backup copy of any item that was present at the time of any remaining backup. Thus you may not gain much space. This is usually fairly quick
I'm trying to reclaim space on a volume that had a time machine backup, but that isn't needed anymore. I'm deleting it so I can get that 1GB+ of space back. Is there some "official" way you're supposed to delete these things where you get your hard drive space back?

Size limit for iphoto library file?

I'm in the process of housekeeping my photo folder in readyness to import into iphoto. I have about 30GB of photo's and want to leave iphoto in the mode that makes its own copy.
I'm therefore assuming that the iphoto library file will be over 30GB....is this reasonable or would you say too big? i.e. would such a large file be likely to cause problems?
Also, how does timemachine back it up - I think it is a package, so does timemachine only backup the changes inside the file, or does it take the whole file each time a change is made?
Thanks for any insight.

I've seen iphoto diet and some terminal commands for old versions of iphoto to shrink the library file size (remove some originals, modified) but don't know if they work on '11. Any ideas how to shrink the size of the library file? I've already gone through and removed dupes and housecleaned.
Never run iPhoto diet or other programs including terminal or use the finder that modify the structure or content of the iPhoto library - doing so will corrupt your library and cause data loss
You can run the iPhoto library on an external drive is disk space is an issue - you can not remove some (or any) versions of the photos from the library
LN

Trash - "preparing to empty trash" for 5 hours. there are 97,000 files. is this normal?

Trash - "preparing to empty trash" for 5 hours. there are 97,000 files. is this normal?

And with 97000 files it IS going to take a "while". Finder, in it's "infinite wisdom", counts the files and the deletes. It's bad enough if it's on an internal drive for that many files, but I can only imagine how long it would take with a USB or firewire external. If you are really sure you want to delete all that stuff then some choices might be,
1. Start the empty trash and go to bed! Maybe, just maybe, it will be done in the morning.
2. Use terminal to do it (won't supply the commands here, but it is a choice).
3. Try a third party utility which hopefully will empty the trash like you would from terminal. Try TrashIt.
Some related reading:
You can't empty the Trash or move a file to the Trash
The X Lab: Solving Trash Problems

Mechanism for inclusion of photos in iPhoto Library file

in addition to the 'iPhoto Library' file contained my 'Pictures' folder there are other folders and files here containing more photos. But how do these get to be included into iPhoto Library and how? It seemed to me that iPhoto Library automatically gobbled up photos all of a sudden one day, and somehow left others 'outside'....so what is the mechanism here?
thanks

1. When iPhoto imports photos it doesn’t move them, it copies them.
2. Iphoto imports nothing automatically, it always needs a User command.
3. To import these files, use the File -> Import to Library command
Regards
TD

How do i delete a backup? I deleted a large iPhoto library, but it didn't create any space as there is now a backup that is the same size.

I deleted a large iPhoto library from my hard drive to make space for an updated version. When I emptied the trash and checked on memory, there was an equivalent sized backup, so I still can't download the new library. How do i delete the backup from my hard drive?

You could be seeing the local Time Machine backup files.
See Time Machine - Frequently Asked Question #30 for the details on Local Snapshots.

IMovie '11 slow to load at every launch (large iPhoto library to blame?)

I'm running 10.6.7 on a late 2010 13" macbook pro. I have a very large iphoto library (over 200GB) that is full of movies made with various digital cameras. I do have a casio AVI video codec installed into quicktime as a plugin, fyi, but all the movies and clips open fine within iPhoto when I double click them.
The first time I opened up iMovie it said that it needed to scan the iphoto library and then create thumbnails. This took several hours, but finally completed. When it finished, I could see all of my movies as events in the iPhoto Videos section of the Event Library within iMovie.
The problem I'm having is that every time I launch iMovie it takes 5 minutes or more to actually open up. The program launches and then I get the spinning beach ball. Opening activity monitor and shows iMovie as "unresponsive" and there is massive disk read activity for a long time. It seems like it's scanning my drive and looking at a LOT of the files. Gigabytes of data is read. After a while, it finally settles down and I can see all the events. All of my clips appear to play fine within iMovie. But it makes using the program somewhat an awful experience as everytime I open iMovie I have to wait such a long time.
I tried trashing the preference file for iMovie and it asked me to recreate all the iPhoto library thumbnails. But I was back to square one aftewards, the same thing... long, long startup time.
Any thoughts or helpful ideas would be much appreciated.
Thanks in advance.

iMovie remembers which you worked with last time you used it. If this is your iPhoto Library it will load all the thumbnails from iPhoto.
To manage your movie clips yourself you can make "events" for them.
1) Make a new event from the File menu.
2) Drag in the clips from iPhoto to that event.
3) Wait until iMovie has made thumbnails for these clips only.
When you quit iMovie it will remember that you worked with this event the last time and it will only load those thumbnails. Much faster. And you can create a new event for the next batch of raw footage.
The downside of this is that you get some videos duplicated so you have them in both iPhoto and iMovie on your disk.

IPhoto Library file partially copied to an external drive

Hi,
I tried to copy my iPhoto Library file to an external drive. The file is about 8GB and when I copied the file to the external drive, it stopped copying up to 277MB. The message from the finder indicates that the "operation can't be completed because an item with the name "iPhoto Library" already exists. I deleted the file from my external drive and empty trash so the file shouldn't be there. I also created a new folder for the destination and still the same problem. It stops copying up to 277MB. Very strange. Now I can't backup this file.
Thanks for your help.

Was having the same issue. Noticed that Time Machine was running. Stopped that and I was able to copy the file over. Another suggestion that I saw was in the link below.
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=10132724&#10132724

How to move a large iphoto library from one external drive to another

Hi all (my first ever post to a forum!)
I have a large iphoto library (379 GB) on an external drive (Lacie 1TB w/usb 2.0) and want to move it to a another ethernet connected external drive (LaCie Network Space 2) so I will be able to access it from other computers.
Moving it with drag and drop or copying is calculated to take 66 day's!
Wander if that could be explaned with the fact that these are around 70.000 individual pictures/files, and if it could be speed up by first compressing the library.
Wander if anyone can shere their experience on that? (what software to use or?)
I have an 21.5 inch, mid 2010 iMac (3.06 GHz Intel Core i3 with 12 GB 1067 MHz DDR3).
I also have the new Macbook Air (1.3 GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 (Turbo Boost up to 2.6GHz - with 3MB shared L3 cache).

iPhoto needs to be connected to the computer you are using it from via a sired connectin both for speed and also for data reliability
THe copy estimate is often way off - let it run and see - it will probably drop a lot quickly
Compressing would not help (assuming you shoot JPEG) since the JPEGs in the library are alread highly compressed
LN

Moved iPhoto 11 library to external drive and have a iPhoto Library file left on desktop

Hello,
I have a blue file on my desktop labeled iPhoto Library, that appeared during the course of me moving my iPhoto Library ( iPhoto 11) to an external hard drive to make room on the internal disk, my attempts to reopen iPhoto on the internal disk, move selected photos from the iPhoto Library on the external drive over to the newly emptied iPhoto Library on my laptop.
The blue iPhoto Library file contains these items:
AlbumData.xml
AlbumData2.xml
iPhoto.ipspot
Questions: does this blue file belong somewhere or can I trash it?
This is what I did:
1. I opened Pictures, dragged the iPhoto Library from there to the external drive.
2. When I opened iPhoto on my MBP it said it needed a library to open with and the choices already in the box were:
iPhoto Library(default)
iPhoto Library
3. I chose "iPhoto Library" because I thought "(default)" meant restoring the original library.
4. iPhoto opened to the "get started with iPhoto" like a new install.
5.I moved (drag and drop ) some photos from the external drive back into the "empty" iPhoto Library. I tried to move a group of photos but I didn't know how to do it so ...
6. I took the iPhoto Library from the trash and put it back into the "empty" iPhoto Library.
7. I tried to delete all the photos except the ones I wanted to keep in the internal iPhoto Library. I couldn't do it so....
8. I closed iPhoto, went back into Pictures and trashed the internal iPhoto Library again.
9. Reopened iPhoto and it needed a library to open with and I think I clicked
iPhoto Library (default)
10. When I opened iPhoto this time, it was the "get started with iPhoto" but the original photo albums and labels listed but all empty.
That's what I remember so far.
Hope you can help.
Medusa59

It appears you created a new library. Launch iPhoto with the Option key held down and select "Choose Library".
Navigate to the library on the external hard drive and select it. Once you're satisfied that it's the one you want you can delete that folder from your desktop.
OT

Advice for cleaning iPhoto Library?

Hello!
I will try to keep this brief. I got my first Mac 6 years ago when I switched over from Windows and obviously made some mistakes along the way in terms of dealing with files, etc. in Mac vs. what I would do in windows. Over the past 6 months or so (now that I am finally out of school and on to the "real world") I have trying to correct the wrongs I had done to my earlier versions of my Macbook in my naivety (including 7 different instances of Python floating around random places).
I am on to my last hurdle, my iPhoto library. I have some ~10,000 pictures and ~200 events including some images that have incorrect dates associated with them and therefore do not sit where they should in the library. I have set place and face data for all images in my library as well once those features were introduced.
Unfortunately I did not let iPhoto copy the master files into the library, instead keeping them in separate folders in my pictures folder.
I am now trying to figure out the best way to export all of my events and save all the metadata associated with them (except faces which I know there is no standard for and therefore cannot be saved) so I can set up a new entirely clean iPhoto library without any of the crap I put it through earlier in it's life. I have no need to keep the "originals" as they are all unedited (except for the metadata changes in iPhoto) and all JPEGs anyways.
In my testing of trying to export an event and then reimport into a new library instance, I noticed that the masters in the new library are all being sorted according to import date and not date photo was taken since I have tried correcting all my image dates using the iPhoto batch editing. This may just be OCD of me, but is there a way to have iPhoto deal with the masters according to photo date instead of import date? I tried using Exiftool to change the "Date created" file metadata to the same date as the Exif metadata, but iPhoto still sorted the Masters by import date.
And any tips about the best way to dump the current library and put it into a new one and keep all possible metadate added in iPhoto already would be appreciated.
Thanks!

leonieDF wrote:
So I found the best way is to simply export my library an album at a time, and use EXIFTOOL to make any other changes necessary before reimporting into my new iPhoto library.
That will not help with your original issue
The original issue with saving all possible metadata? Correct, I understand I definitely lose some information, but (except for the Faces information) I do not care about some of the other stuff being lost and most of what I care about (geotags, etc.) is still being saved to the EXIF/IPTC data upon export from iPhoto. It came down to a question of whether I care more about truly cleaning up all the original files metadata (or the newly exported ones from iPhoto that I will now treat as the "originals") in the event I ever move off iPhoto or care more about doing less work. iPhoto Library Manager is a great tool that I plan on making part of my arsenal, but to get my files where I want them now, I have to do this lengthier/more time-consuming process first because I screwed it up so much over the past ~6 years.
leonieDF wrote:
"his may just be OCD of me, but is there a way to have iPhoto deal with the masters according to photo date instead of import date? I tried using Exiftool to change the "Date created" file metadata to the same date as the Exif metadata, but iPhoto still sorted the Masters by import date."
iPhoto will always use the date of the import session for the "Masters" folder. That is a feature, not a bug. If you want a different date on the event in the "Masters" folder, there is no help but to change the system date and relaunch iPhoto before importing and to trick iPhoto into believing the current date is different. You really would not want to ressort to such measures.
I figured, given that it is Apple and a package contents things that most users should never touch, that was probably the case, but asking the user community for confirmation never hurts. And no, I do not care enough about it to try tricking it that way. .
leonieDF wrote:
So I found the best way is to simply export my library an album at a time, and use EXIFTOOL to make any other changes necessary before reimporting into my new iPhoto library. Tedious, but once it is all done I should never have to do it again.
and some weird issue where it could not find the original files for some albums
Exporting reimporting will not find the original files. If they are missing, you cannot export. You have to find them outside your library, if they are referenced, Inside your library rebuilding should find them for you.
I tried relinking inside iPhoto to the original images and running the rebuild again, but it still had certain image images. So when exporting those albums with a few missing images, the missing ones just copy an empty symlink, which I then replace with the actual original image I have on the hard drive. Then copy the metadata over using EXIFTOOL.
Thanks for all your help/comments!

IPhoto can't find iPhoto Library files

Hi All,
I have a older iMac running 10.4, 512MB RAM. It was running very slowly and reading other posts figured my large iPhoto library (iPhoto 6) was the culprit. I moved all but 2011 pictures to an external hard drive and deleted files from my iPhoto Library (did this through the Finder, not iPhoto). I can see my .jpg files on the external drive and can see the 2011 .jpg files on my HD in the iPhoto Library. When I launch iPhoto, I have no photos. Within iPhoto I've tried to "import to library" and select my 2011 folder of .jpg's but the file is "unreadable". I've tried changing the location of my iPhoto Library folder and "chose library" but that hasn't worked either.
I think I may have deleted some file or path that allows iphoto to access the iphoto library folder (I copied back a "data folder" from the external HD but that didn't solve my problem) but I can't figure out what it could be. Can anyone help? I am just barely literate and apparently, know just enough to get myself into trouble, so "dumbed down" instructions would be very much appreciated.
Thanks for any help you can lend!
Shannon

believe it or not, but I did do some research before I started... I was just trying to back up files and create space - don't you people advocate for that kind of thing?
I don't think that I did not follow your link... I did not move the entire contents of my original library, just most, I wanted... well it doesn't matter - I was able to solve the problem following a tip posted by "Old Toad" found below.
Thanks for trying to help - I'm just glad I can see my photos again.
TIP: For insurance against the iPhoto database corruption that many users have experienced I recommend making a backup copy of the Library6.iPhoto database file and keep it current. If problems crop up where iPhoto suddenly can't see any photos or thinks there are no photos in the library, replacing the working Library6.iPhoto file with the backup will often get the library back. By keeping it current I mean backup after each import and/or any serious editing or work on books, slideshows, calendars, cards, etc. That insures that if a problem pops up and you do need to replace the database file, you'll retain all those efforts. It doesn't take long to make the backup and it's good insurance.

Is there a recommended size for the iPhoto Library

I have a large iphoto library .. and when I say large i mean it .. over 500GB ... mostly RAW files... over 50,000 images
And even if my system was handlying things great till now .. i7 processor with 16GB of RAM .. I can see the system slowing down a bit lately ..
Wondering if there's a reccomanded library size as I can't find any info .. and yes I know i can break up the library but i don't want to do that ..
I do use Lightroom .. but don't like the way it organize things .. and also use Aperture .. but ... not impressed at all .... and having a feeling Apple will soon pass it out .. no, i don't have any inside information .. just my feeling.
I just would like to know if there's a max size in order to avoid a DB corruption .. or something similar.
Or max size for best performances ..
thanks

No max size and as to preformance that mostly has to do with your ahrdware - and youve got great stuff
Others have reported larger libraries but yours certainly is large
best protection against corruption is good backups
LN

Why does the iPhoto library file copy so slowly?

Every few months I back up all the important stuff on my MacBook Pro (Mid 2012, 13", 750GB) to my 3TB external hard drive.
This has worked well for as long as I can remember. I used to have a proper backup program but due to the nature of my work and files, recently I prefer to just manually copy over each individual folder in my parent home folder, so I can have control of what is replaced and what is merged, etc.
However this time backing up, I had to copy every folder and file in 'Pictures' separately. This is because after trying to copy the parent folder in one transfer it didn't seem to be working well. I noticed that around the 11.22GB mark, the transfer would always slow right down from ~35MB/s to ~0.5MB/s. As you can imagine, with a Pictures folder totalling almost 300GB, this isn't something I wanted to put up with.
In the end, I figured out what was causing the issue. I tried copying just the iPhoto library file and discovered the problem occurred again.
Why? Is this a Yosemite bug or is it to do with the way that the file is structured?
It works fine otherwise and does not seem damaged.

no idea
maybe if you provided some information someone could help
What version of iPhoto? Of the OS? Why do you think it is getting larger? what exactly are you doing?
Could it be downloading photos from Your PhotoStream?
LN

How can I designate the disk for the iPhoto library?

how can I designate the disk for the iPhoto library?

Moving the iPhoto library is safe and simple - quit iPhoto and drag the iPhoto library intact as a single entity to the external drive - depress the option key and launch iPhoto using the "select library" option to point to the new location on the external drive - fully test it and then trash the old library on the internal drive (test one more time prior to emptying the trash)
And be sure that the External drive is formatted Mac OS extended (journaled) (iPhoto does not work with drives with other formats) and that it is always available prior to launching iPhoto
And backup soon and often - having your iPhoto library on an external drive is not a backup and if you are using Time Machine you need to check and be sure that TM is backing up your external drive
LN

Emptying Trash for large iPhoto Library File on HDD not completing

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