IPhoto and Address Book issues

Question

I went to Finder window to locate a picture in iPhoto. I noticed in the iPhoto library files labelled as e.g.Thumb32Segment.data etc (they are all Segment.data files). When I opened them, Address Book opens them with a dialogue window stating 'No new cards added". I sent them to Trash and deleted them. Nest time I opened iPhoto, a dialogue window opened stating 'Rebuilding Thumbnail Cache'... When I checked through Finder, it would seem the Trashed files have been re-formed. I Trashed them again using Secure Trash... Guess what! You guessed it.. Next time I opened iPhoto, same thing happened.. 'Rebuilding Thumbnail Cache'.. and yes, even though they were 'Secure Trash(ed)', they've reappeared. I'm new to computing, so I'd like to know what is happening, is it significant, and is there anything I can do to stop it. Or am I best just not knowing, leaving the Thumbnail Segment.data files where they are and hoping for the best?

Answer 1

The photos appeared to be missing because iPhoto had lost track of their locations. This can be caused by user tampering in the iPhoto library folder. If you move or rename the photos or their folders, it changes the file path, which breaks the link to the iPhoto database. Or, sometimes a database file becomes corrupted and iPhoto loses the links even without such user tampering. A power interruption, crash, or force quit while iPhoto is writing to the database can cause database corruption.
How you recover those photos may depend on the underlying cause of the damage. If you know you moved or renamed something inside the library folder, the fix is fairly straightforward. Quit iPhoto, locate those files inside the iPhoto Library folder (using the Finder -- sometimes 2 wrongs do make a right) and drag them to the Desktop. Then launch iPhoto and locate the thumbnails representing those photos. Move them to the iPhoto Trash (in the Source List) then *empty the iPhoto Trash*. That clears all trace of the photos from the database, so that you may now import the files from the Desktop and start over with them. It would be a good idea after that process to run the database rebuild that Old Toad advised, since the direct manipulation of the library files could have caused minor damage to your database file.
If you didn't tamper inside the Library folder, then your database may be corrupted. While it may seem to only affect a few photos now, the damage could be hidden and may appear to progress. The fix for this is to follow Old Toad's instructions to rebuild the database. With a mildly damaged database, the rebuild will restore the links to your photos, and all will be well. With a severely damaged database, the rebuild process will bring all the damage immediately to light. In that case, you'll have to resort to more drastic means to restore your library. But wait... you say you keep regular backups? You can take the damaged "Library6.iPhoto" (that's the main database file) out of your current library, and copy the good one from your backup into your library. This will restore your library back to the state of your backup. Any photos you've added or work you've done since the backup will have to be re-imported (as described above) or redone.
Also, why would iPhoto rebuild thumbnails of .data files from Address Book?
Those .data files have nothing to do with Address Book. They are created by iPhoto for your database. What happened was that when you opened them, your Mac decided that Address Book was the best application to use for those files. All files have information about which application should be used to open them. To see it, select the file and do File > Get Info (Command i). The get info box has a section "open with" which reports the default application assigned by the file. You can change that assignment there. Or you can right-click (control-click) on the file and use the contextual menu to change the "open with >" designation. When I look at my Thumb...Segment.data files, the "open with" is set to "none". Yours somehow got set to Address Book. Since AB didn't recognize the files, it gave you the error message. You could set yours to "none" but since you know not to open them directly, there is really no need to do anything.
Regards.