iPhoto library missing after Snow Leopard>Mountain Lion upgrade on Mac Pro?

[NEENAHBOY]

Hi all,

After upgrading my parents' Mac Pro from Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion, everything seems to have transferred perfectly, except for the damn iPhoto library (it's the '08 version). iPhoto launches with the dreaded "The iPhoto library could not be found" message and there's now a new one in the Pictures folder that's only ~7MB, and I can't find the actual database file itself using Spotlight.

They do have a backup via Carbon Copy Cloner. I formatted the external drive to remove an extraneous partition and re-cloned before the upgrade, but I believe that because of its backup schedule (every 24 hours) it's no longer on the external drive. My thought was to use something like PhotoRec to try to pull them off the external drive, but would the upgrade have moved the iPhoto Library somewhere else?

It's just absolutely baffling to me that everything would transfer correctly except for the photos.

Any thoughts?

 

[Weaselboy]

A Mavs upgrade should not even touch the iPhoto library and I suspect of you look in the users Pictures folder you will see it is still there.

I think what may have happened was if you noticed there was a iPhoto update that was in software update after the Mavs update, and that new version of iPhoto is causing you problems.

Try rebuilding the iPhoto library by following this guide.

 

[flynz4]

I agree that it is extremely unlikely that your iPhoto library was deleted. Instead... it probably is located in a non-standard location, and you need to link the application to its location.

However... your point about your backup not having the library anymore is a perfect example of an ongoing debate that I have been having with people on this forum. Clones are great... but I do NOT consider them backup... because they do not retain "usable" (if any) versioning/history. My personal recommendation is to only use a clone program after you already have a full backup solution (with versioning).

/Jim