An Iphoto mess...

Hi!

I've got a Powerbook G4 version 10.4.11 with version 5 of Iphoto. I knew I was in trouble space wise (had used 75 GB of a 80 GB disc) and started deleting a lot of my 9000 photos a couple of days ago. I wanted to get more space, and only keep the photos I really wanted before making a copy of the library to my external Lacie Hard drive.

So, I deleted almost 3500 photos and emptied the thrash around half way. So far so good, I didn't want the photos I deleted anyway. But when I tried to transfer my Iphoto library to the Lacie, I accidentally put the library in the thrash, but didn't empty. I took the library out of the thrash, and tried to put it back in Iphoto. Iphoto proceeded to import the files, but it only imported half of it and said that it's trying to import 9000 images, which would include the ones I've deleted. After it imported around 4-5000 images it said that the disc was full and it stopped.

I've tried restoring the library and some of the photos are back but only 900 or so. I've tried restoring thumb nails, but the same goes for the thumb nails. It says now that it's got 3500 photos, but I can only see around 600 of them, the rest are white with grey boxes, and furthermore, the ones it did import, I've got 4-6 versions of each images, so it's created a lot of duplicates...

What do I do, I'm on the verge of a breakdown. I've now tried to import the whole library to the Lacie hard drive. It says now that it's importing 14.000 images, which is way too many... How do I get my photos back and only one copy of each photo? I don't care if I get the ones I've deleted back, or if I lose the alterations I've done, or my albums. I just want one copy of each of my photos and go from there.

If you decide to help me with this, please write in an easy to understand manner, I'm not very good at this (obviously!)

Thanks, C

Well, your relatively slow computer has to load 3500 images. Give it some time, you'll be able to see the photo thumbnails.

What happens when you right click on your iphoto library and show the package contents? In the contents folder you will see the originals folder. Maybe you could correct the problem in there and re-import.

It didn't work at all. It got all the time it needed but the images were duplicated fivefold and some never showed up. I think it has to do with the space issue, so I thrashed the library and emptied it, but transferred the whole 14000 images over to my Lacie first and I'll have to transfer it again to my new iMac which I'll get in a week (640 GB space, yay!) and start cleaning up the mess from there. I did check that the images are indeed on my external hard drive, before emptying the thrash, and they are.

So I'll just have to be patient when I get the bigger, faster iMac next week and do it all over again! Crossing my fingers