Missing Photos please help!

[Backtothemac]

As if things haven't been bad enough lately they just got worse. I realized today that none of our family photos prior to 2005 are on my Mac. That is nearly 2,000 pictures of my daughters childhood. They were on my external drive at one point, because I moved them to my Mac, but I don't know what happened, and they are not in time machine.

I need a file recover software, and don't know what to use. Please advise.

Thanks,
B2TM

 

[motulist]

Don't jump the gun. Your files may not be erased, just misplaced. Clarify your exact situation. When you say they're missing, you mean they aren't showing up when you look at your photo library through iphoto, correct?

 

[Backtothemac]

Don't jump the gun. Your files may not be erased, just misplaced. Clarify your exact situation. When you say they're missing, you mean they aren't showing up when you look at your photo library through iphoto, correct?

They are not in iPhoto, they are not anywhere on the drive. I have looked in time machine, I have looked in every possible place on my mac, and two external drives. They are flat out gone.

 

[motulist]

What I meant was, you use iphoto as your only photo management software, correct? If so, open iphoto, control click on any random photo and select "show file." This will open up your iphoto library in the finder as if it were a regular folder, then open the enclosing folder to see all the folders in the iphoto directory. Now just look through the folders and see if you can find the missing photos.

*** DO NOT CHANGE ANYTHING ABOUT THESE FOLDERS OR FILES!!!! If you do, then iphoto will be wrecked, which is why Apple made access to these folders so hidden. Just open these folders and see if you can find the missing photos, but do nothing else to the photos at all.

 

[Backtothemac]

Yeah, I did that. There are no files prior to 2005 in the iphoto library anywhere. I am running sellarphoenix on my external drive and waiting for the results before I pay 129 for it.