Help! [Where are my pictures]

[montemorton]

Here is my MacBook problem...about 6 months ago I was getting an error message that read, "my start up disk is almost full". I couldn't download anymore photos so I hired a computer geek from the yellow pages to fix it. I use iPhoto that is in my Mac to manage my photo's.
He took my computer for a couple days and installed a 3rd party software called iPhoto Manager...? I never used it until last night. That didn't work and he couldn't find the problem so he told me to purchase an e-drive ($150 for his time plus $175 e-drive). He transferred all photo's to the e-drive from my iPhoto and told me to trash iPhoto and just use the e-drive.
I never trashed iPhoto and good thing because after a week I couldn't find my photo's on the e-drive. I some way fixed it myself by trashing all the extra photo's I had thought were trashed...he couldn't figure that out...?
It was working fine until last week when I started getting the same error message "my start up disk is almost full". So I started trashing things I never used like some desk top icons (my screen is full of icons). I sent to trash the iPhoto Manager icon but never emptied it. When I went to use iPhoto it said I had zero photo's instead of over 7,000. I went back to the trash and retrieved iPhoto Manager and brought it back to desk top. I notice in there that my photo's were there and click on them. Everything was ok and I was using my iPhoto but when I shut off my MacBook and came back about 2 hours later it was gone. Also, it now doesn't show in iPhoto manager...?
Help!

 

[simsaladimbamba]

Do you mean "i-Drive"?
Or what is "e-Drive"?
It seems, you got conned by that computer geek, who didn't know much about Mac OS X, as he recommended iPhoto Manager, which is not necessary with 7000 photos (no apostrophe needed for plurals) and iPhoto, unless you are very bad at sorting them correctly. And with iPhoto Manager you still need iPhoto, as it only manages your iPhoto libraries.

A good solution would be to buy a cheap external HDD (USB 2.0 should suffice) with 500 GB to 1 TB capacity, either a small 2.5" mobile HDD or bigger 3.5" desktop HDD.
Then make a backup of your current Mac via CarbonCopyCloner to have a bootable and 1:1 clone, then do a clean install of Mac OS X.

To find out, how much free HDD capacity you have, go to Finder and open a new window and look at the bottom
Also take a look at DiskInventory X (will not work in Mac OS X 10.7 Lion), OmniDiskSweeper, JDisk Report or GrandPerspective to see where your HDD space went to.
And know, that icons on the Desktop represent files.

And to learn your way around Mac OS X:

Helpful Information for Any Mac User by GGJstudios​

To edit your thread title to a descriptive one, just click on the

button on the bottom right of your original post and then click the

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[montemorton]

Sorry...

Sorry, it's called a G-Drive and I didn't mean anything bad about calling him a Geek...that is the name of his company "The Computer Geek".

How can I retrieve my photo's or where did they go? Also, does it have anything to do with permissions?