Have I formated my External Hard drive wrong? Can't get to my iPhoto library.

Question

Hello,
I have recently rebooted my old iMac 2008, and am attempting to start using it again fro photo editing with iPhoto and Aperture. My photos are on an external Harddrive called MY BOOK. The problem is that neither iPhoto nor Aperture recognices the photo library on my EHD any longer. When I try to open iPhoto with the old library from the EHD, I can see the "package" there, but cannot highlight it.
When I started using the EHD about a year ago, I was recommended to reformat it to Mac OS Extended, which I did. But now, when I look at the EHD in diskutility, I see the hard drive on 2 lines. The top line states:
3 TB WD My book 1130... and format: Mac OS Extended
The lower line says:
MY BOOK and format: MS-DOS (FAT)
And when I have a look under the info tab in Finder, it says MS-DOS (FAT32)
I suspect I must have done it wrong when I did the original partitioning.... but I was able to use the library from the harddrive, so wasn't aware of the problem.
How am I going about to correct my problem, so that I can read my picture-library again?
I am using OS X 10.8.5
I have posted this question in the iPhoto forum, but was told that this probably is an OS X problem... can you help?

Answer 1

If you see a message about rebuilding your thumbnail cache
Over time, iPhoto can become less efficient at accessing the photos in your library. Rebuilding the cache can help iPhoto display your photos faster, and can also resolve issues such as thumbnails that appear to be dimmed or missing.
After upgrading iPhoto, you might see a message asking if you want to rebuild your thumbnail cache. You can choose whether to do it then or come back to it later.
Important:  You should back up your iPhoto library before rebuilding your thumbnail cache.
Hide
To rebuild your thumbnail cache:
If iPhoto is open, quit it.
Hold down the Option and Command keys while you open iPhoto (click the iPhoto icon in the Dock).The Rebuild Photo Library window opens.
Select at least these two checkboxes:
Rebuild the photos’ small thumbnails: This option rebuilds only the small versions of the thumbnails, such as those that appear in the photo browser when you are creating a book or slideshow.
Rebuild all of the photos’ thumbnails: This option rebuilds all the thumbnails associated with a photo, including the small ones and the thumbnails that appear in a photo album or an Event.
For information about the remaining checkboxes, visit the iPhoto Support websiteand search for “rebuilding the iPhoto library.”
Click Rebuild.Rebuilding the thumbnail cache may take several minutes.