I have 61,000 photos on my 2009 MacBook (OSX 10.9.5) in iPhotos (9.5.1) that I can no longer access. They include all photos taken or scanned from years 1960-2017. I can no longer update the OS or the iPhoto program on the MacBook. iPhotos freezes or closes after a few minutes of use on the old MacBook and I can't sync the photos to my iCloud account. I put them on an external hard drive and tried to open them with my Macbook Air, but after an hour it's only loaded 1% and the library is 450 GB and I only have 100 GB on my Air. Have I permanently lost all of my photos?
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Old pictures on 2009 MacBook stuck in iPhotos
- Thread starter steveblake
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Get an external hard drive or better SSD.
Connect it to your MacBook whit the iPhoto Photo library. on this MacBook:
go to your home directory, there is a folder called ‘Pictures’ where Apple stores all your photos. If you have used iPhoto, then in the ‘Pictures’ folder there will be a file called ‘iPhoto Library’. It appears as one file. Don’t do this, but if you were to click it then it would try to open in iPhoto, or Photos. Instead, if you hold down the control key while you click, you will see an option called ‘Show Package Contents.’ Click on this.
![contents]( "contents")
Now you will see all kinds of files. Find the one called ‘Originals’ and click on it.
![Originals]( "Originals")
Now you will see a new folder with a lot of years. Click on a year, then a month, and you will see all the pictures from your iPhoto library from that month. You can then open the photos one by one, copy them, or do what you like with each picture.
![years]( "years")
The photo’s are arranged in folders under the years and months they were taken.
Drag these Folders to the external SSD.
Connect it to your MacBook whit the iPhoto Photo library. on this MacBook:
go to your home directory, there is a folder called ‘Pictures’ where Apple stores all your photos. If you have used iPhoto, then in the ‘Pictures’ folder there will be a file called ‘iPhoto Library’. It appears as one file. Don’t do this, but if you were to click it then it would try to open in iPhoto, or Photos. Instead, if you hold down the control key while you click, you will see an option called ‘Show Package Contents.’ Click on this.
Now you will see all kinds of files. Find the one called ‘Originals’ and click on it.
Now you will see a new folder with a lot of years. Click on a year, then a month, and you will see all the pictures from your iPhoto library from that month. You can then open the photos one by one, copy them, or do what you like with each picture.
The photo’s are arranged in folders under the years and months they were taken.
Drag these Folders to the external SSD.