My 8,614 photos have vanished

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I opened up iPhoto and it is as empty as the day I bought the laptop. Frustratingly I was days away from spending a whole day backing them all up which would have been a nightmare of a task, I am just hoping that they are hiding in some file somewhere but I've had a good look already.

I downloaded iPhoto Library Manager and went to file/rebuild only for it to inform me in a box that 'This library cannot be rebuilt because its XML file contains no image records.'

There is no iPhoto library to be found under finder/username/library which is very worrying. Would they be anywhere else?

Finally, there is something worth mentioning - in the last three weeks before this happened, I was getting a message upon opening iPhoto - something about 'The following photos could not be imported, they are at user/iPhoto/etc... something' - now I had no idea what these 2 images were and after getting the double box each time I opened iPhoto it was just plain annoying and I think I found said files (about 7) and deleted them, plus the plists.

Could I have deleted my entire library in one hit (I emptied the trash also) and if so, why was there no 'Are you sure you want to do this' warning???? Also, If I did delete everything, why do I have the same amount of space as before, I mean surely nearly 10 thousand pics is going to make a noticable difference to my disk space? If I've lost all my pics, I at least want to have the space back that they took up!

Lastly, I tried clicking on the Time Machine icon at the top right of the screen and when I try to enter Time Machine it says 'The operation could not be completed - an unexpected error occurred (error code 43).

Any ideas folks?

Regards

SB
 

vansmith

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There is no iPhoto library to be found under finder/username/library which is very worrying. Would they be anywhere else?
Your library is under ~/Pictures/ and is called iPhoto Library.
 
OP
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I've done that, it's totally empty except for a picture I added today. :(
 

cwa107


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Any chance you renamed your Home folder recently?
 
OP
Shoeboat
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I have looked everywhere and as far as my 3 year old MacBook Pro is concerned, iPhoto is brand new and empty. I have tried the above link, thanks for posting it but it hasn't made any difference.

A visit to my local i-Studio is in order I think.
 

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