Photos App corrupted — Wife enraged

[Jam3s007]

Hello all,

So here’s where I’m at. My wife has a used 4 year old IMac. It was factory restored by me and was slow as a snail for some reason. Clicking “about Mac” took about 20 seconds for the screen to populate if this gives any clue about how slow this computer was. The computer would also tend to hang up for a few minutes after waking up from sleep or loading at the desktop upon login.

I ran Mac pawls latest Mac cleaning app as I heard on YouTube it could possibly help my situation. I ran the program and it seemed to drop loading hang ups and fix the “about Mac” hitch. Performance did noticeably increase. Now around this time I ran the Mac OS Mojave update. Now, I am out of state for a looooong time and apple Is throwing an error upon launching the photos app in the dock. My wife tried running the photo app repair command and that didn’t work. The app seems to offfer a restore point (the day of the OS upgrade/Mac cleaner run) and that didn’t work. I told her to launch time machine and that only seemed to offer to run a back up rather than restore. The photos app is sized at around 80Gb so I know there’s photos in there somewhere, what can I do at this point? My wife is furious and I’m not even there to help troubleshoot. She spent a lot of hours gathering photos to this computer but we never took the time to run a backup (due to personal reasons being extremely overwhelmed lately).

What can we try here?

Thanks in advance, anything is appreciated at this point.

- Jameson

 

[jpn]

it sounds like disk repair apps won't help at all.
instead of enraging your wife further, i suggest you entirely take over all attempts to get it working well yourself.
like by her sharing her screen with you through iMessage so you can try whatever you want.
its the way i fix anything on my wife's MacBook when i am not there.
i have no idea what you did to the computer when you say you did a "factory restore" yourself.
in the end i think you are looking to do a complete clean restore from your off-line backup(s) and just adding back yr files/data. but it sounds like a hardware mismatch of some sort.

 

[grandM]

Hello all,

So here’s where I’m at. My wife has a used 4 year old IMac. It was factory restored by me and was slow as a snail for some reason. Clicking “about Mac” took about 20 seconds for the screen to populate if this gives any clue about how slow this computer was. The computer would also tend to hang up for a few minutes after waking up from sleep or loading at the desktop upon login.

I ran Mac pawls latest Mac cleaning app as I heard on YouTube it could possibly help my situation. I ran the program and it seemed to drop loading hang ups and fix the “about Mac” hitch. Performance did noticeably increase. Now around this time I ran the Mac OS Mojave update. Now, I am out of state for a looooong time and apple Is throwing an error upon launching the photos app in the dock. My wife tried running the photo app repair command and that didn’t work. The app seems to offfer a restore point (the day of the OS upgrade/Mac cleaner run) and that didn’t work. I told her to launch time machine and that only seemed to offer to run a back up rather than restore. The photos app is sized at around 80Gb so I know there’s photos in there somewhere, what can I do at this point? My wife is furious and I’m not even there to help troubleshoot. She spent a lot of hours gathering photos to this computer but we never took the time to run a backup (due to personal reasons being extremely overwhelmed lately).

What can we try here?

Thanks in advance, anything is appreciated at this point.

- Jameson

Photos are priceless
If you have no backup contact an apple genie
Whatever you do stop tempering for now
Also make no change at all to the OS

 

[misterbig]

What can we try here?

Thanks in advance, anything is appreciated at this point.

- Jameson

Please don't take this as condescending or anything since I don't know how experienced you and your wife are at fixing computer problems. As someone who's fixed computers for a long time I strongly recommend your wife bring the Mac to a trustworthy shop for an expert to look at it. If you and your wife are not experienced then trying to fix the problem yourself could end up making the matter far worse.

An expert, without deleting any files or reinstalling the OS, would be able to run software to determine if the photos are still on the Mac and if they are recoverable.

 

[Jam3s007]

Thanks all for the quick responses. I’ll have to find a buddy with an apple computer to attempt iMessage screen sharing. Is this an easy process to initiate? I don’t have an apple computer with me at my current location. If this fails, I will find an expert in or around my wife’s location.

Thank you all for your responses! I truely appreciate it!

- Jameson

 

[Partron22]

Never let someone less skilled than you try to fix a problem you don't understand.
I don't let Photos.app anywhere near my pics. Apple's habit of putting simple collections of things in complicated and human unfriendly databases seems prone to causing hard to untangle problems.

 

[Jam3s007]

Never let someone less skilled than you try to fix a problem you don't understand.
I don't let Photos.app anywhere near my pics. Apple's habit of putting simple collections of things in complicated and human unfriendly databases seems prone to causing hard to untangle problems.

I agree with this statement. idk why my wife went with this type of system for storing photos. I was raised on Apple computers and currently use PC and the photos app in general just boggles my mind *sigh*

 

[T'hain Esh Kelch]

Your photos are not gone, they are still in the Photos Library file, so there's that. But you may have lost all of your metadata. If the repair tool isn't working, then odds are that the library index file is damaged, and it is likely pointless to fix it.

So lesson learned, backups are important - Especially for something so important, as photo memories are! You can right-click the Photos Library in Finder, select Show contents of package, and take out the images manually. And then don't run that weird program again, that you used.

 

[Gravydog316]

Doesn't sound like a big deal, since the photos are still there.

i was having photo issues that were caused by iCloud not backing up completely...
(& an external HD (or 2) for backups is a good idea, Santa.)

 

[Jam3s007]

Thanks for the input gang. I should be able to update the wife on this and I believe the results willl be good! I will be sending her her own personal external/back up drive from Santa!

 

[misterbig]

Somewhat related: OP, if you know that finding time to backup photos is an issue, I strongly recommend using an automatic cloud backup like Dropbox, Google Photos etc... I have my important photos from the 70s and 80s backed up to the cloud, as well as to 2 separate hard drives for maximum peace of mind. Problem with hard drives is that they can get corrupted or physically lost so it's always a good idea to have a copy on the cloud which is automatically backed up as your first line of defense.

 

[LogicalApex]

Somewhat related: OP, if you know that finding time to backup photos is an issue, I strongly recommend using an automatic cloud backup like Dropbox, Google Photos etc... I have my important photos from the 70s and 80s backed up to the cloud, as well as to 2 separate hard drives for maximum peace of mind. Problem with hard drives is that they can get corrupted or physically lost so it's always a good idea to have a copy on the cloud which is automatically backed up as your first line of defense.

Backups should always follow the 3.2.1 rule as you were going toward.

3 copies,
2 different kinds of media,
1 offsite.

Cloud can be convenient, but carries its own risk vectors. Everything from unintentional access to data loss to costs. So keep backups of cloud stored data as well.

 

[MacHiavelli]

If possible, COPY the MASTERS folder at least (and try to create a new library).

http://osxdaily.com/2017/02/23/where-photos-files-located-mac/

 

[mtngoatjoe]

If possible, COPY the MASTERS folder at least (and try to create a new library).

http://osxdaily.com/2017/02/23/where-photos-files-located-mac/

Yes! Make two duplicates of the Photos library. Copy one to an external drive and disconnect the drive. Add "Original" to the original file name, and add "Working Copy" to the duplicate. Be VERY careful about what library you are trying to work with. Never ever open the original until you've solved the problem using a duplicate. Even then, make sure you have at least one backup available if something else goes wrong.

If you get to the point where you need to take the iMac to an expert, make sure you have a backup of the library on an external drive, and leave that drive in a safe place. Sometimes repair technicians will wipe your data before you fully understand what they are going to do.

Good luck!