iPhoto HELP!!!

In going through this process, I have realized that I made a few mistakes along the way. I should have had backups, etc. But, I am past that point now, and need some help.

Here is my situation:

My wife filled her MacBook Pro hard drive with about 100 GB/10,000+ images in her iPhoto library. We purchased an external harddrive, and moved the iPhoto library to the external harddrive, everything was great.

However, since the move to the external hard drive the USB port on the back of the hard drive was damaged. I then moved the hard drive to a new external case. The Mac is unable to read the hard drive in the new external case and says it needs to be reformatted when I plug it it.

The problem I am faced with is that when the external hard drive is scanned by a data recovery program, there is no data that is found to recover.

Does iphoto save the library in a unique format?

I am not intimately familiar with computers or macs, but I am pretty good when asked a question... so maybe my post doesn't make sense, but I am desperate for some insight!

Please help!

So as I understand you, you MOVED rather than COPIED the iPhoto Library to the external hard drive, correct?

I'm not very clear on why/how the USB port on the previous CASE was damaged, but that should not have affected the drive itself, so there's no reason why it should not be working in the new case.

The actual iPhoto Library is a monolithic "package" type folder and although the photos inside it are in stock-standard JPEG format, not a lot of other programs can "read" the structure of the iPhoto Library.

You never made clear that the hard drive itself is actually damaged, so I would urge you first to find a Mac technician (DO NOT take this to "a guy who works on Windows") and verify that the drive is or is not okay.

If it is not okay, beat yourself up for having no backups and call Drivesavers. It will cost you a couple grand to get those pictures back, but they'll get them back. STOP fooling around with a "recovery program" that isn't recovering anything, repeated use will do MUCH more harm than good.