Recover Photo library from Time Capsule

[Dippedut]

My old iMac was slow - very slow. I was working on making it faster again but at last it was impossible to do anything.

Thinking that I had a full backup on my Time Capsule, I did a clean install to OS X El Capitan.
Then used the 'Migration Assistant' to recover my data.

BUT... the Photo library from the Time Capsule isn't working. (Error message: The library can't be opened - The library "Photo Library" wasn't recognized"), and the library-file is only 2,39 GB even though i know I had more than 200 GB pics on my old mac.

My guess is that the latest backup on the TC wasn't fully completed (maybe iPhoto was running while the last backup was made :-S)

The questions are:

1) Is there a way to re-create the an older version of the Photo-library from the Time Capsule, without having to recover the old and slow system again?

2) Is there a way to actually see what's on the Time Capsule? (when i open it in 'Finder' there is only one folder with the name 'Data', and in that there's one 1,85 TB Disc image-file)

Please help - It's 15 years of photographing i can't recover

 

[Weaselboy]

Open the Finder then navigate to inside your Pictures folder. Now go to the Time Machine menu item and select Enter Time Machine. Once the restore window below comes up look to the far right of the screen and you will see date/times of previous restore points. Scroll back on that time line and select a date/time from when you think you last had a good backup and select that date. Once the screen refreshes, select the Photo library then click restore. That will put the old version of the Photo library back in the Pictures folder.

 

[Dippedut]

Open the Finder then navigate to inside your Pictures folder. Now go to the Time Machine menu item and select Enter Time Machine. Once the restore window below comes up look to the far right of the screen and you will see date/times of previous restore points. Scroll back on that time line and select a date/time from when you think you last had a good backup and select that date. Once the screen refreshes, select the Photo library then click restore. That will put the old version of the Photo library back in the Pictures folder.

Thank you, thank you, thank you very much. It seems to work!

 

[glenthompson]

Glad that Weaselboy's advice worked. Now going forward rethink your backup strategy. Multiple backups using different applications is the best way to go. Particularly when you are deleting and reinstalling the system. A CCC clone is great to have so you can boot with it on another system and have access to all your apps and data.

I've done a lot of corporate disaster recovery testing so get a bit involved with my own data.

 

[Sparkypower]

Open the Finder then navigate to inside your Pictures folder. Now go to the Time Machine menu item and select Enter Time Machine. Once the restore window below comes up look to the far right of the screen and you will see date/times of previous restore points. Scroll back on that time line and select a date/time from when you think you last had a good backup and select that date. Once the screen refreshes, select the Photo library then click restore. That will put the old version of the Photo library back in the Pictures folder.

Hi Weaselboy, apologies for jumping in on one of your reply's but wonder if you can help? Have an old white macbook 2007 model which I was trying to clean and remove everything so that I could give it to friends child. I managed to run the erase in disk utility then somehow managed to run the Snow Leopard disk and put it where the Mac HD would be? Tried your advice I found where you suggest partitioning the Sata drive but its greyed out so I'm stumped. When I look at the disk utility screen is 500.11 GBST9500420A.. at the top and below that almost as a folder to that Mac OS X Installl DVD (I managed to load this hear by mistake. Is it retrievable or am I totally screwed?

 

[Sparkypower]

Thank you, thank you, thank you very much. It seems to work!

Hi Weaselboy, apologies for jumping in on one of your reply's but wonder if you can help? Have an old white macbook 2007 model which I was trying to clean and remove everything so that I could give it to friends child. I managed to run the erase in disk utility then somehow managed to run the Snow Leopard disk and put it where the Mac HD would be? Tried your advice I found where you suggest partitioning the Sata drive but its greyed out so I'm stumped. When I look at the disk utility screen is 500.11 GBST9500420A.. at the top and below that almost as a folder to that Mac OS X Installl DVD (I managed to load this hear by mistake. Is it retrievable or am I totally screwed?

 

[Weaselboy]

When I look at the disk utility screen is 500.11 GBST9500420A..

It sounds like there is no partition (volume) there to install to. In Disk Utility go to the erase tab and select that 500.11 GBST9500420A at the top. Then select Mac OS Extended (Journaled) in the dropdown and apply that format. Now you should see a volume below 500.11 GBST9500420A and can install to that.

 

[Sparkypower]

It sounds like there is no partition (volume) there to install to. In Disk Utility go to the erase tab and select that 500.11 GBST9500420A at the top. Then select Mac OS Extended (Journaled) in the dropdown and apply that format. Now you should see a volume below 500.11 GBST9500420A and can install to that.

Ok when I go to disk utility I chose erase the click on the 500.11 drive as you suggest, but the format and name menus are greyed out?

 

[Sparkypower]

Ok when I go to disk utility I chose erase the click on the 500.11 drive as you suggest, but the format and name menus are greyed out?

Ok when I go to disk utility I choose erase, then click on the 500.11 drive as you suggest, but the format and name menus are greyed out? In fact everything in First Aid and Erase are greyed out on this drive? Images attached

 

[Weaselboy]

I managed to run the erase in disk utility then somehow managed to run the Snow Leopard disk and put it where the Mac HD would be?

Tell me more about what you did here? It looks like you copied the DVD to the hard drive and are now booted to the DVD image you copied to the HDD?? If that is the case, you will not be able to format the drive because you are booted to it.

Do you have the DVD to boot straight to that?

 

[Sparkypower]

Tell me more about what you did here? It looks like you copied the DVD to the hard drive and are now booted to the DVD image you copied to the HDD?? If that is the case, you will not be able to format the drive because you are booted to it.

Do you have the DVD to boot straight to that?

I have the snow leopard installation DVD yes

 

[Sparkypower]

So to confirm I was trying to cleaned the machine completely and managed to run erase on the Mac HD then without realising it I loaded the installation dvd on that space and thats where I am?

 

[Weaselboy]

So to confirm I was trying to cleaned the machine completely and managed to run erase on the Mac HD then without realising it I loaded the installation dvd on that space and thats where I am?

Yes, I think that is what you have done. Put in the DVD then hold the C key at startup and it should boot to the DVD then allow you to erase the drive like you want.

 

[Sparkypower]

but won't that erase the installation disk?

 

[Weaselboy]

but won't that erase the installation disk?

Yes it would, but isn't that what you want? You want to erase the internal hard drive then install Snow Leopard from the DVD was my understanding of what you were trying to do?

 

[Sparkypower]

Sorry for my ignorance I'm a bit of a novice in these things! So if I understand you I put the installation disc into my machine which shows up under the Matchita CD drive, then you say I select the Mac osx inst disc which is where my HD should be and then I should be able to delete that information? But when I do that I still have everything greyed out on the erase tab

 

[Weaselboy]

Sorry for my ignorance I'm a bit of a novice in these things! So if I understand you I put the installation disc into my machine which shows up under the Matchita CD drive, then you say I select the Mac osx inst disc which is where my HD should be and then I should be able to delete that information? But when I do that I still have everything greyed out on the erase tab

Nope.. you are a bit off. Put the DVD in the optical drive then reboot and hold the C key down at startup. That should make it boot to the DVD. Now once on running on the DVD you should be able to erase the internal hard drive (500.11 GBST9500420A) like I described earlier. Then once the disk is erased go ahead and install Snow Leopard from the DVD.

As I understand what have been doing up to now you have never C key booted to the DVD itself... is that correct?

 

[Sparkypower]

yep and I just tried it held the c key and nothing happened so after a couple of minutes I let go the c key and now in disk utility I see these?

 

[Weaselboy]

yep and I just tried it held the c key and nothing happened so after a couple of minutes I let go the c key and now in disk utility I see these?

Still the same problem. You are booted onto the internal hard drive and not the DVD, so you cannot erase the drive while you are booted to it. You need to somehow get booted to that DVD. Is this the grey DVD that came with the computer or the retail DVD?

If it is the grey OEM disk, those were model specific and another model's won't work with yours.

Could also be the optical drive is bad. Have you used the optical drive recently? Does it make noise like it is trying to boot from the optical drive? Might try again and hold the C key and wait longer.

 

[Sparkypower]

Ok I'll try that again holding the c key at start up, the drive did make a lot of noises like it was trying?
If this doesn't work can I partition the 500.11 drive to say 50g to 450g and load install on the 50 g part?

 

[Weaselboy]

Ok I'll try that again holding the c key at start up, the drive did make a lot of noises like it was trying?
If this doesn't work can I partition the 500.11 drive to say 50g to 450g and load install on the 50 g part?

You mean put the installer in the second partition then install the the first? Yes that should work if you can get it to partition, but the way you copied that DVD to the one partition for some reason does not want to let it be resized.

 

[Sparkypower]

Ok tried exactly what you said word for word and got these results

 

[Sparkypower]

I've now partitioned the 500.11 drive and have 2 drives what do i do now please?
And by the way I'm sure everybody says this but thanks so much for all your time.

 

[Weaselboy]

Ok tried exactly what you said word for word and got these results

From this screen shot it looks like you are booted to the DVD? Can you now use Disk Util to erase the hard drive? If you can do that, just go ahead and erase the drive and install from the DVD.

 

[Sparkypower]

Ok partitioned the drive tried reinstalling on the 50g and the 450g and both attempts failed?