09-13-2009, 03:46 PM

hard drive was near full on my macbook. on the advise of apple support i went out and bought a external HD formated for MAC. followed the directions, drag and dropped 4 years worth of pics on to the ext hd. closed iphoto on the mac book, opened it from the external hd.....all pics were there. ejected the HD, deleted all the pics off the macbook. now when i plug the HD back in all the pics are gone off of i photo!!!!!!!!! from the ext HD!!! WTF!!!!!! i am steaming ****** off right now

09-13-2009, 04:02 PM

Right now i would go ahead very carefully as there is a good chance your can recover your pics. Any chance you can take MacBook and Ext HD into a Genius Bar and get them to go thru the files and recover them. Have u already emptied the trash - if no - dont.

09-13-2009, 04:08 PM

How do you know Iphoto just isn't looking for the old links to the same pictures on your hd on laptop.??? I know that's a problem with itunes like if you move the music... Your computer always knew them to be on the computer hd.. Maybe go about it a different way.

09-13-2009, 04:37 PM

Sounds to me that there must be something in iPhoto preferences that allows you to change the library location. iPhoto may be looking for your pics in the old location and may need to be told that it's now on this external hard drive.

09-14-2009, 08:48 AM

This won't help for this time....

I read stories like this on forums all the time. "I moved this, verified it was in the new location, deleted the old ones, now they're all gone."

Step one: good. Step two: good. Step three: bad.

I never delete anything immediately after verifying the transfer appears to have worked. Let it sit next time, for several days... weeks, even months. (I've kept originals around for over a year!) Work with it, get comfortable that it's really there. Create a test file and see if all manipulations with it behave as expected. Is it on the hard drive or really on the external drive? Be sure B4 you delete.

If you can't leave the originals on the hard drive, create two copies somehow, even if it takes 100 CD/DVDs.

09-14-2009, 09:01 AM

Originally Posted by anthony k

hard drive was near full on my macbook. on the advise of apple support i went out and bought a external HD formated for MAC. followed the directions, drag and dropped 4 years worth of pics on to the ext hd. closed iphoto on the mac book, opened it from the external hd.....all pics were there. ejected the HD, deleted all the pics off the macbook. now when i plug the HD back in all the pics are gone off of i photo!!!!!!!!! from the ext HD!!! WTF!!!!!! i am steaming ****** off right now

Anthony,

have a look at this discussion on Apple regarding the relocation of an iPhoto library
Apple - Support - Discussions - Moving iPhoto library to external hard ...

Hope it helps.

Cheers ... McBie

12-16-2009, 03:41 PM

You can try to recover them using photo recovery software. Just scan the entire hard drive (or card or other media) and see the photos you can get back.
Hard Disk Photos Recovery Flash recovery software for compact flash secure digital memorystick seems to be popular and can have lost/found/deleted Problems.
You can easily restore data including digital pictures, images, text documents, songs files, picture albums, audio video films.

12-16-2009, 03:43 PM

You can try to recover them using photo recovery software. Just scan the entire hard drive (or card or other media) and see the photos you can get back.
Hard Disk Photos Recovery Flash recovery software for compact flash secure digital memorystick seems to be popular and can have lost/found/deleted Problems.
You can easily restore data including digital pictures, images, text documents, songs files, picture albums, audio video films.

12-17-2009, 08:30 AM

3 months old

I hope by now the OP already solved it.