06-02-2011, 03:38 PM

My motherboard unexpectedly died on my MBP. I just bought a HDD enclosure on Amazon and took out my HDD. There's no way to retrieve iPhoto photos if they aren't in the directory, right?

06-02-2011, 03:50 PM

I think the answer to that is, no. If you have another Mac you should be able to boot from the external drive (your old HDD) and everything should be unchanged from before your Motherboard died.
You can move your photos out of the trash and export them to a new folder if you wish.

I'm not certain, though, what would happen if you did a migration to a new Mac. Regardless, unless you write to the old drive all of your files should be just as they were before the crash.

06-03-2011, 01:22 AM

Originally Posted by tossimo

My motherboard unexpectedly died on my MBP. I just bought a HDD enclosure on Amazon and took out my HDD. There's no way to retrieve iPhoto photos if they aren't in the directory, right?

If it was the motherboard that died, and the hard drive is undamaged, then all your photos are fine.

You're not seeing them in the Pictures directory because they are stored inside iPhoto's Photo Library, which is a package.

All you have to do to "recover" them is to launch iPhoto *holding the option key down.* It will ask you if you want to open (or create) a library, point it to the one on your now-external HD and you should be right back where you were.