Restoring iPhoto contents from an external hard drive results in duplicates! Please help!
Hi Folks,
I have an iMac 2.8Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo computer that had it's DVD fried and I gave it to Apple to fix it. They did and they also upgraded me to the Mac OSX Lion 10.7.4. I am not sure if I am a fan of this OS but that's a different story. I had backed up everything to an external hardrive (not using time Machine). The external drive is a Hitachi and came with it's own back-up software for the Mac. I was able to restore everything except iPhoto properly. By the time I specified the directory that contained my library information, I ended up getting duplicates events/pictures of EVERYTHING to the point where it has eaten up more than 100GB of my 350GB hard-drive
Now I have been looking through all of the duplicate events that iPhoto created, I see that most of them are thumbnails. I also downloaded photosweeper Lite to find duplicate pictures and that didn't help. I am a Unix hack and could write some sort of script to compare the fine names etc but I know that's not a practice that's encouraged and I really don't have the time to putz with it.
So can you please let me know how can I re-restore iPhoto properly please given what was in the back-up hardware? Here is what the directory structure looks like in the external drive:
Hitachi Restore/Users/mrghoo/Pictures/iPhoto Library
The content of the above directory is:
drwxr-xr-x 11 mrghoo staff 374 Nov 13 2011 Modified
drwxr-xr-x 13 mrghoo staff 442 Nov 13 2011 Originals
drwxr-xr-x 4 mrghoo staff 136 Nov 13 2011 Contents
drwxr-xr-x 13 mrghoo staff 442 Nov 13 2011 Data
drwxr-xr-x 55 mrghoo staff 1870 Nov 13 2011 iPod Photo Cache
drwxr-xr-x 4 mrghoo staff 136 Nov 13 2011 iPhoto Selection
-rwxrwxrwx 1 mrghoo staff 11094396 Aug 28 2011 AlbumData.xml
-rwxrwxrwx 1 mrghoo staff 14868185 Aug 28 2011 Library6.iPhoto
-rwxrwxrwx@ 1 mrghoo staff 51 Aug 28 2011 iPhoto.ipspot
-rwxrwxrwx 1 mrghoo staff 1 Aug 28 2011 iPhotoLock.data
-rwxrwxrwx 1 mrghoo staff 48136192 Aug 22 2011 Thumb32Segment.data
-rwxrwxrwx 1 mrghoo staff 192532480 Aug 22 2011 Thumb64Segment.data
-rwxrwxrwx 1 mrghoo staff 96268288 Aug 22 2011 ThumbJPGSegment.data
-rwxrwxrwx 1 mrghoo staff 7838533 Aug 8 2008 ThemeCache
-rwxrwxrwx 1 mrghoo staff 20 Jul 16 2008 Library.data
-rwxrwxrwx 1 mrghoo staff 20 Jul 16 2008 Library.iPhoto
Can you let me know once I start iPhoto '11 how I make sure it reads the correct files from the list above?
I am sorry for the long winded request but if anyone could help, I would REALLY appreciate it. Thanks in advance!
-J
Lori
Sorry to hear of your difficulties.
Simply copy the iPhoto Library Folder from the back up to the Pictures Folder on the MBP and launch iPhoto. It will do the rest.
Alternatively, you can leave the library where it is and hold down the option (or alt) key and launch iPhoto. From the resulting dialogue select 'Choose Library' and navigate to the Library on the Back Up disk.
Regards
TD
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