iPhoto 9.5.1 to Photos import problems!

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Created Sep ’15

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I copied 2 iPhoto libraries to an external drive and then copied them to a storage partition on my start-up drive. Holding the option key I started Photos and did a search for my files. There they were. I copied them over and everything seemed to have gone well. Until.. I disconnected my external drive, poof they were gone. Seems they actually copied them from my external drive. I've searched through my Mac for any prefs or path but nothing. I have one external drive I keep connected to my Mac so I tried copying them to it but like the copies in the storage drive and on my desktop they are greyed out as not available. I deleted the files from my picture folder and tried everything I could think of but no joy. It will however copy again from the original external drive I installed from so obviously there is some prefs somewhere?

I get the message,

“Cannot open migrated library”

“The content of the iPhoto library “iPhoto” has already been migrated to Photos. Open Photos to view your library or use a compatible version of iPhoto to open this iPhoto library.”

Thanks for any help..

Ken

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Answer 1

Max108 OP

Sep ’15

Hi again Ken 🙂

What you're seeing is because of the way Photos migrates your iPhoto library, not because of a preference somewhere - the photos are hard-linked (to save space) to the iPhoto libraries that you had on the external drive.

The first thing to do is close the Photos app and decide where you want your iPhoto libraries to be on your mac - this location has to be either on your internal drive or the external drive that is always connected because the new Photos libraries will be hard-linked to them, so the iPhoto library can't be absent when Photos is reading the Photos library or you'll get what you've been getting already.

Next step is to right-click each iPhoto library and select "Show Info". You will see that it has the extension ".migratedphotolibrary". You need to delete the word "migrated" so that the extension only says ".photolibrary".

Then option-open the Photos app (like you did before) and select an iPhoto library to migrate. There will be the appearance of the creation of a new library of roughly the same size as the iPhotos one, but this is illusiory - in fact it doesn't take up real extra space on your drive even though Finder might cause you to think otherwise.

The theoretical understanding behind these practical steps is outlined here: http://sixcolors.com/post/2015/02/the-hard-link-between-photos-and-iphoto/

It's a good article to read.

I hope this sorts it out for you 🙂

-Max

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Answer 2

Mac-in-tosh OP

Sep ’15

Hey Max,

I did exactly what you said, no luck.

I did in hindsite think I should have tried a restart to help sort it out?

When I partioned my drive for this clean install of El Capitan I set up a storage partition which seemed like the ideal place for this. After trying the iPhotos library in my storage drive (with corected file names) and the ones in the external drive I used to move them originally w/o sucess I then just just deleted them all and started over. Following my original aptempt I made a new copy from my source drive in my MBA. Then I re-coppied the 2 iPhoto libraires to my Mini's storage drive and dissconnected the external drive. Then usining the import method above, Whala.. success! 🙂

Ken

1

Answer 3

Max108 OP

Sep ’15

Yes, I wanted to suggest deleting the libraries that were linked over the wrong drives, thereby taking them out of the equation, I wasn't sure about how many copies of your library you had and was concerned primarily with not leaving you without your photos. Anyway I'm glad you got it sorted one way or another 🙂

Max

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