The alias "iphoto image" could not be opened

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I back up my photos from iphoto and from image browser onto an external hard drive and DVD. Thankfully the photos on DVD are still saved but when I try to open the photos that were saved to my external hard drive this message pops up: The alias "(date of photo)" could not be opened because the original item cannot be found. The options it gives me is to delete alias, fix alias, or ok.
How do I get my photos back?
Please help.
 

chscag

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Where are the original photos stored? Aren't they saved in your iPhoto library which should be on your Mac's hard drive (unless you moved the library)? It sounds like you didn't actually copy the photos to your external hard drive but instead created aliases to them.
 
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I deleted the originals off my hard drive because it was full. That's why I wanted to save them to DVD and my external hard drive. I have a bunch of other photos on my external hard drive that saved ok previously but maybe I didn't do it right this last time. I dragged and dropped the photos which is what I usually do. Should I have copied them? Isn't dragging and dropping a way to copy the photos or maybe it just moves them?
So if I created aliases for them is there anyway to get my pictures back? Luckily I saved all my photos on DVD too, except for a few very special photos which I never actually burned to DVD but put on my external hard drive.
Thanks for the help.
 

chscag

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You didn't actually copy them. All you did was create aliases of them or what's known as shortcuts to the originals. Since you removed the originals from the hard drive, the aliases no longer have a path to the originals and you get that error.

What you burned to DVD is saved and you should be able to copy them back to the Mac's hard drive into the iPhoto library. However, the several special photos that you didn't save to DVD but put on your external hard drive are gone. If they're important, you may be able to recover the originals of them from the Mac's hard drive with special software.
 
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That makes sense. Now I will know for the future that I have to select copy photos instead of dragging and dropping.
Is there a link for some free software that you know of to try to recover those photos? Is that going to put my other photos at risk? Thanks so much.
 

chscag

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Free recovery software is hard to come by. There are several recovery applications that have trial versions which will show you if the files can be recovered:

Disk Drill

Data Rescue 3 (Mac App store)
 

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