Missing Horizontal Photo Files - Thumbnails visible

I was going back through my iPhoto Library and came across a strange issue. It appears that a vast majority of my horizontal photo files are missing starting in July of this year and going back to 2005. The thumbnails show up but when I doubleclick I get the dreaded exclamation point. When I search for the file, it is not on the harddrive. Fortunately I have a backup from August that appears to have the pictures in it, I started using a Time Capsule in September and it only has the corrupt library on it.
1. How do I get these pictures back, where did they go?
2. How do I restore from the backup harddrive? I cannot go through thousands of pictures, write down the file name and restore them one by one?
3. Doesn't this seem odd that the files for the vertically aligned photos are OK?
4. This is extremely disconcerting, ie what else is missing?

sareddie
Your files should be perfectly safe...
iPhoto (like iTunes) is a database but unlike most databases which hide the data away from the file system, it stores the data in plain sight. So rebuilding works on the files that track the pictures, rather than on the pictures themselves.
Here's how the iPhoto Library Folder is structured: In this folder there are various files, which are the Library itself and some ancillary files. Then you have three folders
Originals are the photos as they were downloaded from your camera or scanner.
(ii) Modified contains edited pics, shots that you have cropped, rotated or changed in any way.
This allows the Photos -> Revert to Original command - very useful if you don't like the changes you've made.
(iii) Data holds the thumbnails the the app needs to show you the photos in the iPhoto Window.
So that explains why the Modified Version of a pic is present, but begs a question... where have your missing pics gone? And how did they get there?
Rebuilding a database would try to recreate the link between the thumbnail in the iPhoto Window and the file, but if the file is missing, it obviously cannot do it.
Is there any possibility that you - or another user - might had accidently deleted or moved these files? Are they in your trash? If you have a file name try Spotlight for them.
Regards
TD

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http://reviews.cnet.com/data-recovery-software/
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Message was edited by: Cleftone
Message was edited by: Cleftone

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Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!
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*For users of 10.4 and later* ...
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If you use Apple's Mail, Entourage, AOL or Eudora you can email from within iPhoto.
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Regards
TD

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My Acrobat Pro 9 has also this bug. I am using XP SP2. I have reported this bug at Adobe web site many times. I wrote to the Adobe customer care. I wrote about this on many different forums and I was hopping an update with this bug fixed. I installed all updates till now bu the problem still exists. I do not know why Adobe is not caring about this stupid bug. It is really, really annoying. In my experience with Adobe Acrobat for about 10 years, Acrobat version 9 is the worst version I ever worked with. There are a lot of glitches and bugs in it, expecially with fonts, web version creation, password protection encryption etc etc.
If you find any fix please post back on this forum.
Many thanks,
Shaju

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Weirdly, when I right-click on one of these images and select "Manage Referenced Files..." I get a message that "The selection doesn't use any referenced files." I get the same message when I select "Manage Referenced Files..." from the File menu with the entire project selected.
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To test one user error scenario, I imported some test photos into the Aperture library and then relocated the masters to the desktop. I then quit Aperture, deleted the photos on the desktop, and relaunched Aperture. As expected, the test photos had the same "The referenced image’s master file has not been found" badge, but when I right clicked and selected "Manage Referenced Files..." I got the expected dialog, unlike when I select the same option for the missing 29 photos.
Any ideas what went wrong?
G5 iMac Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Thanks for responding...
It sounds pretty odd. First try to rebuild the
database...as was suggested (Option>CMD on launch of
Aperture).
I will try this eventually. But I want to get some insight first, in case this could create more problems than it solves. I am also holding off on updating to 10.4.9 for the same reason.
This might help. If not, try to make an
adjustment on one of the images. This will force the
thumbnail to redraw. If the adjustments aren't
available for that particular image, then the image
is really offline somewhere.
I am unable to make any adjustments on these images.
I assume you went into your Library "Show Package
Contents" to confirm they are missing. If not, try
that.
Yes, the images are not in the folder with the other images from that import. Further, I used the unix 'find' and 'locate' commands to search my entire hard drive and backup drive, and the images were not found.
Can you Export the image?
That was how I first stumbled on this problem -- I tried to export and got an error message that "Versions with unavailable master images cannot be exported."
The weird thing is that when I try and get the 'Managed referenced files...' dialog, Aperture claims that "The selection doesn't use any referenced files" -- that tells me this data loss might be the result of a bug and not user error.

Recovered Photos File

I actually have two issues which may or may not be related. When I start up my iphoto 6 I always get a message that I have 4895 photos that have not been imported, I always select do not import because I am not missing any photos. I had seen on the discussions that the problem could be in my iPhoto libaray under a file called recovered photos.
I have about 12,000 photos in my library the size of my library is listed as 66.7 GB. When I check the size of the recovered photos file it is listed as 24.5 GB. The file includes movie clips, jpeg files, iMovie titles, and various other files. Most of the materials are dated as far back as 2004 which is strange since I created this iPhoto library in May of 2006 and did not import any previous materials into it. Would it be wise to delete this folder?
I am always fearful of doing anything to my library, such as updating thumbnails as long as things are working fine.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
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When I check the size of the recovered photos file it is listed as 24.5 GB. The file includes movie clips, jpeg files, iMovie titles, and various other files.
That is strange, indeed. I wonder how iMovie projects ended up in your iPhoto Library.
If I understand you correctly, this "Recovered Photos" folder is inside your iPhoto Library folder. Just move it out of there to your desktop. Also, if there is an "Importing" folder inside your iPhoto Library folder, move it out as well. Then launch iPhoto and see if that error message appears or not.
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Missing Horizontal Photo Files - Thumbnails visible

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