Help recovering an old iPhoto/photos library off a dying external

[Abbbby333]

Many years ago(2016/2017 ish), My computer screeched to a halt and had run out of storage space. In a fit of desperation, I transferred my entire photos library over to an external drive. This worked for a while, but before too long the external began to die. Despite upgrading computers a couple of times in the interim years, I never got around to restoring the photos to my main machine and I haven't had a functioning photos app since the initial panic transfer (so all photos I save off of the internet are just saved in my pictures folder and I haven't been able to sync photos from my phone since then).

I have finally summoned the courage to tackle this and I am running into issues.
1. I am unable to open 'photos' on my computer as it is unable to find the photo library. When I plug in the dying external and try to open 'photos' from that library, it says it is read only and that i need to copy it to another volume to open it.
2. I am trying to move the library from the external to the desktop of my computer. I was successfully able to do this with some stand alone jpegs and some word docs that I had on the external, now with the iPhoto and 'Photos' libraries, its been stuck on 'preparing to copy' for hours.

I am prepared to leave it over night to see if it will ever move past this stage, but I'm curious if anyone else has a similar experience? Were you ever able to get it to copy over?

If that doesn't work, I am planning on following the steps outlined in the links below.

How to fix an uncopyable iPhoto or Photos Library

A reader is running out of storage and getting errors when trying to copy her media library to an external drive.

www.macworld.com

Repair a storage device in Disk Utility on Mac

If you have problems with your disk, use Disk Utility on your Mac to test and repair it.

support.apple.com

Repair your library in Photos on Mac

In Photos on your Mac, repair your library if you experience problems with photos.

support.apple.com

For those with more experience in this area, are these the right steps to follow? Is there any advice or alternative you would offer?

TIA

 

[Slartibart]

The first thing should be to copy the library as it is to a new storage medium. You should be able to so so.
After that simply import it into Apple Photos.

EDIT: what system are you using now? which version of which OS?

 

[Abbbby333]

The first thing should be to copy the library as it is to a new storage medium. You should be able to so so.
After that simply import it into Apple Photos.

EDIT: what system are you using now? which version of which OS?

The computer I’m trying to copy it on to is running Big Sur, but the photo library was exported onto the external back in 2016/2017, so it was running whatever the is was back then

 

[Slartibart]

The computer I’m trying to copy it on to is running Big Sur, but the photo library was exported onto the external back in 2016/2017, so it was running whatever the is was back then

First get it copied on this Mac. Importing then from this copy into Apple Photos again or getting the photos is relatively easy.

 

[Abbbby333]

So after leaving it all night to see if it would move from 'preparing to copy' to actually copying, the iPhoto library has started to copy! It is moving at a snails pace, but it is moving. The Photos library is still 'preparing to copy' but I am hopeful that once the iPhoto library complete the move the Photos library will be next!

 

[Slartibart]

stay strong. 🤜🤛😎

 

[NoBoMac]

Keep it running, but if I'm reading things correctly, might be copying extra data, as Photos library contains links to iPhoto for "original" photos. Photos contains hard links to images that were in iPhoto vs actually moving them into Photos during the initial conversion.

This assumes that you originally copied the Mac's "Pictures" folder vs copying each library individually to the external. If copied "Pictures", then it should have retained the links, otherwise, Photos now contains a copy of all the pictures originally in iPhoto library.

If the entire Pictures folder was copied to external, could simply copy it off and retain the links.

 

[Abbbby333]

Update! Sadly the copying of the iPhoto library failed before it was able to complete. I ran the external through disk utilitie’s first aid a couple of times and got this error message. I’ve started following the instruction of the first link I provided in my initial post and was successfully able to transfer over my full iPhoto library by going into ‘show package contents’ And copying from there. I was even able to open up the photos app and see photos in it for the first time in years! I am now going through the archived photos library and this is definitely where the issues lie. I have successfully been able to transfer over some things, but others seem to hang on ‘preparing to copy for far too long. So the good news so far is, I have been able to save a bulk of my photos and I am zeroing in on where the true problem lies!