I have lost my entire IPhoto Library and albums

IMac OS X V 10.6.8
I have lost my entire IPhoto Library and albums.
How do I restore?

Your only other option is to stop using your Mac as soon as possible to minimize precious data being overwritten to, purchase a high quality, fast external hard drive, preferably a FIreWire external hard drive such as these
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/1394/USB/EliteAL/eSATA_FW800_FW400_USB
using an OS X Snow Leopard install disc, format this external drive as a Mac OS extended (journaled) formatted hard drive with a GUID partition scheme and then, using a install disc of OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, install a fresh copy of OS X Snow Leopard and boot your Mac to that external hard drive by using the Startup Disc icon in the OS X System Preferences Panel to boot your Mac to the external hard drive. Once your Mac is booted and running from this hard drive, then use the OS X Software Update feature to update that version of OS X Snow Leopard to OS X 10.6.8.
Then, you need to do a web search for a Data recovery software such as Prosoft Engineering's Data Rescue and purchase, download, install and use this software to perform data recovery of your iMac's internal hard drive following the proper instructions on how to use the software. to recover the data.
Be advised that any images you recover will no longer be in a format that IPhoto will read and most like will just be a folder with just the images alone without any more linkage to the IPhoto library, but I am not completely sure about this as I always have redundant backups of my entire system.
If this seems all too complicated and complex to you, you need to stop using your Mac ASAP and either contact an Apple Store or Apple Authorised reseller/service/repair center to find out how much it will cost for them to recover your data and bring your Mac in for a more professional data recovery.
I still strongly advise you purchase a high quality, large storage, fast, external hard drive to use for future data backups to prevent such a catastrophic data loss from happening, again.
Every computer user SHOULD have, at least, one external backup drive and having redundant backup drives is even better.

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- What version of the Operating System.
- Details. As full a description of the problem as you can. For example, if you have a problem with exporting, then explain by describing how you are trying to export, and so on.
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Downloading past purchases from the App Store, iBookstore, and ...
Then check here for the non-purchased items:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2452022
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Link the two Macs together and use iPhoto Library Manager
Regards
TD

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cdkayak
Welcome to the Apple Discussions.
There's absolutely no harm in using PSE with iPhoto, it's Bridge that's a killer. So that's what you chuck from your machine. Set up PSE as an external editor in the iPhoto Preferences. That way you can double click a pic in iPhoto and it will open automatically in PSE, save it PSE and have it come back into iPhoto seamlessly.
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Hold down the option (or alt) key and launch iPhoto. Choose Locate, and point iPhoto at the iPhoto Library Folder.
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That said, if these don't work, your options will only be to create and populate a new library: To create and populate a new library:
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Go into the iPhoto Library Folder on your desktop and find the Originals folder. From the Originals folder drag the individual rolls to the iPhoto Window and it will recreate them in the new library.
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"Unreadable files: 1. The following file could not be imported: '/Users/john/Pictures/iPhoto Library/Library.iPhoto.'"
is because iPhoto will not import a picture that's in the active iPhoto Library Folder - a sensible precaution against duplication.
Regards
TD

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I have lost my entire IPhoto Library and albums

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