My children have been hard at work :(

T

Tellegrand

macrumors newbie
I did a search and and wasn't able to find anything on this topic... Sorry if I missed something. We just went Mac about a year ago and loved it so much we just got a MBP for us and the kids got the iMac. I went to transfer the digital photos to the new computer and iphoto has disappeared.... I've searched under applications, utilities, and About this mac, and nothing. I've searched for jpg files to no avail. Being that we are still "new" to macs does anyone have any suggestions? I know that my kids can be pretty creative, but I can't imagine that they managed to wipe out the program and all of the files individually. We are running Leopard. Also... we were just getting ready to get Time Capsule to start the household on the automatic backup process.... but not yet:( Any help would be appreciated.
 
did you search for iphoto in spotlight?


edit-- and the photos are stored in iphoto library, but don't mess with that or it will screw them all up.
 
Yes, that was the first thing I did... spotlight has always been so great at "finding" other things they misplaced and I was surprised when nothing came up.
 
Hi,

iPhoto itself not the problem, you need to find the iPhoto library, containing all your files.

Typically it's in <your home directory>/Pictures/iPhoto Library. Try search for it with Spotlight if you can't find it there.

Hope this helps.
/Rupert
 
Thanks for the info... unfortunately now I'm really worried. I was not able to locate iphoto library under any searches. I also searched all images and wasn't able to locate it either. It's like one day the entire thing just went poof. We aren't talking about a few pics either... hundreds. They must be in there somewhere:( Just curious, if I can't locate the library how can I reload iphoto? I still have the leopard disk. Can I choose a partial install for that program only? Will it "search" out any jpg files and consolidate them? I imagine this is wishful thinking on my part. Thanks!!
 
Did your camera usually start iPhoto by itself when you plugged it in? Because if so, moving it shouldn't cause it to stop working. If it doesn't come up now, it was probably delete and you'll need to reinstall it from the iLife CD that came with your computer.
 
In addition to your main directory (hard drive folder), there is another directory (folder) named "Users".
Open that and see if the iPhoto Library is there.
 
thank you everyone for your input. To answer all of the questions...We are running leopard but Time machine hasn't been activated yet. Long story short we were waiting for Time Capsule but lately I've been reading about slow wireless connectivity so we were "thinking". Apparently we thought to long:eek: We did run to check the trash in hopeful anticipation.... but nothing there. We went through and found users... nothing in that folder either. Every since we have had the imac, iphoto has opened when we connected camera, but now it won't. Apparently I need to learn how to activate the parental controls also.:confused:
 
Re-install iPhoto from your original disk. See if it finds them. If not, I'd tell the kids that the boogie man is gonna get them for messing with the computer. (just kidding.....kinda)
 
It looks like a reinstall is in order. Insert disk 1 and click on Install Bundled Software Only. Select iPhoto and let it install (I think it'll ask for disk 2). Once it's reinstalled, you will hopefully still see all of your photos when you start it back up.
 
I just did a search in both the Finder and in Spotlight. Despite the fact that I was looking at the iPhoto Library in a different window, neither search found it. I was able, however, to find jpgs contained within the library by doing a search for images as well as a search for files named jpg.

There are a couple of places that Spotlight does not search. If you children moved the folders there, you would have to navigate to the folder yourself and search within it. The two I know of are System and Library, both on the root drive.

Finally, when all else fails, you may be able to get many if not all of your photos back. It will take some time running on your entire hard drive, but there are programs that will find deleted images on any disk. My favorite is FileSalvage, which you can find online. It would probably need to run all night, or longer, and will give you an exhaustive list of images, but you may be able to ween it down using the EXIF data imbedded in the image by your camera.
 
I just thought of another idea . . .

Start the iMac in Firewire target disk mode by holding down the T key during the start up process. Using a Firewire cable, connect the iMac to the MBP. Using Finder on the MBP, navigate to the FW Drive icon for the iMac, and select Get Info. Towards the bottom you should be able to check "Ignore Permissions on this Drive." Next let Spotlight index the entire drive, and finally search it again. Using this method, Spotlight on the Macbook Pro would be able find the files if they are still there, regardless of where they are hidden.

Also, do you have more than one user on the iMac?
 
Thanks!!! We are going to load up a search tonight and let it run. If no luck then we'll do a re-install (probably have to do it anyway). The children have been informed about the boogie man (just kidding hehehehe... but they do feel a bit sorry - for the moment). You guys are great, this is one of the reasons we have never regretted going mac :apple:
 
If the photos got tossed in the trash, everything you add to the computer will overwrite the HD space, and will ultimately destroy the data. I would go with a file recovery program before doing anything, including installing programs!:eek:
 
Tellegrand said:
thank you everyone for your input. To answer all of the questions...We are running leopard but Time machine hasn't been activated yet. Long story short we were waiting for Time Capsule but lately I've been reading about slow wireless connectivity so we were "thinking". Apparently we thought to long:eek: We did run to check the trash in hopeful anticipation.... but nothing there. We went through and found users... nothing in that folder either. Every since we have had the imac, iphoto has opened when we connected camera, but now it won't. Apparently I need to learn how to activate the parental controls also.:confused:
Click to expand...

If Time Capsule doesn't take your fancy then you should try something else, like an external firewire/USB hard drive. Trust me, it'll save you a lot of hassle in the long run if you have backups. Time Machine is a great piece of software and it's so easy to find stuff either you or someone else has accidentally deleted. (I recently had to do a re-install of Leopard and used Time Machine to get back all my downloads and documents.)
 
Tellegrand said:
Thanks!!! We are going to load up a search tonight and let it run. If no luck then we'll do a re-install (probably have to do it anyway). The children have been informed about the boogie man (just kidding hehehehe... but they do feel a bit sorry - for the moment). You guys are great, this is one of the reasons we have never regretted going mac
:apple:
Click to expand...

If you have done a spotlight search and not found any .jpg files then this piece of advice is what you should follow:

mperkins37 said:
If the photos got tossed in the trash, everything you add to the computer will overwrite the HD space, and will ultimately destroy the data. I would go with a file recovery program before doing anything, including installing programs!:eek:
Click to expand...
 
OK... a few questions. What is the best file recovery program? Is Filesavage (mentioned earlier) one of the best? Finally-- based on recent experience we are going to get serious about backing up. Which one is better... Time Capsule or going with an airport base station with USB external connected. I've read much about Time Capsule causing people all kinds of problems on here... so i've hesitated. But within the last few weeks multiple people seem to have been seeing LOTS of issues with the extreme since the last update was sent out. All in all we are not really heavy users... I would say we just "play". My MBP is for work use so I'm more concerned about backing that up. I'm running fusion with winxp... Maybe just getting an external HD and manually doing a back up once a month and not doing it wirelessly until things smooth out? It seems to be an endless debate, but waiting any longer seems to be costing us more than helping us. (other than spending lots of $ on something that isn't going to work of course:D)
 
Tellegrand said:
OK... a few questions. What is the best file recovery program? Is Filesavage (mentioned earlier) one of the best? )
Click to expand...

The best one I have used is testdisk (and it is free :))

I don't have any experience with time capsule or airport extreme wireless backups.

I have two external drives that I clone my system onto using SuperDuper! smart update, makes backing up a 20 minute job.
 
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