Photos have all disappeared! Help!

[Tashi12345]

Hi! I'm not sure what happened. I have 12 photo albums in my photo library, and suddenly they're all empty. The albums are still there and titled correctly, but all of my pictures have been deleted. The only pictures that are showing up are five that I took on my phone yesterday. I connected my iPhone to my MacBook Air yesterday morning to charge, and last night I noticed my pictures were all gone!

The weird thing is that the albums are still there. How could my pictures all disappear and my albums remained? I"m so bummed. These were pictures from various summer trips that I took, and I was stupid and didn't keep them on an external drive. I've checked my iCloud and they aren't there either.

I figured I would ask the forum and hopefully receive some sort of miracle. Any tips? Thanks!

 

[HDFan]

Are the photos there in both locations (All Photos in iCloud Web and on your phone, if you haven't deleted them) but the albums are empty?

I assume you've logged out/in of iCloud both on your phone and on the web.

 

[ftaok]

Are you using iPhoto or Photos on your Mac?

Don't give up, your photos might still be somewhere.

Here's what I would do first.

1. Go to your User Folder/Pictures and see if iPhoto Library or Photos Library is still there. If so, Copy that file onto a fresh external hard drive, just to have a fresh back up. If you don't have a drive big enough for the library, that could be a good sign. Might mean your photos are still there. See next step.

2. Check to see the size of the library file. It should be many many gigs. If the size is smaller than it should be, maybe you have issues.

3. Check your backups (either a cloned drive or a Time Machine backup). Check the library file on the back up to see if the file size is what it should be.

4. Now, assuming you have a backup, the next step would be to right click on the Library file and select "Show Package Contents". From there, you should be able to navigate the file structure of the library. Look in a folder called "Masters" and drill down to see if your photos are still there.

4a. If they are, maybe it's just as simple as a corrupted database file. To rebuild the database file, open iPhoto/Photos while holding both the CMD-OPTION keys down. You'll get a dialog that will step you through rebuilding the database.

I hope you have a back up somewhere and your photos aren't lost.

 

[Tashi12345]

Are you using iPhoto or Photos on your Mac?

Don't give up, your photos might still be somewhere.

Here's what I would do first.

1. Go to your User Folder/Pictures and see if iPhoto Library or Photos Library is still there. If so, Copy that file onto a fresh external hard drive, just to have a fresh back up. If you don't have a drive big enough for the library, that could be a good sign. Might mean your photos are still there. See next step.

2. Check to see the size of the library file. It should be many many gigs. If the size is smaller than it should be, maybe you have issues.

3. Check your backups (either a cloned drive or a Time Machine backup). Check the library file on the back up to see if the file size is what it should be.

4. Now, assuming you have a backup, the next step would be to right click on the Library file and select "Show Package Contents". From there, you should be able to navigate the file structure of the library. Look in a folder called "Masters" and drill down to see if your photos are still there.

4a. If they are, maybe it's just as simple as a corrupted database file. To rebuild the database file, open iPhoto/Photos while holding both the CMD-OPTION keys down. You'll get a dialog that will step you through rebuilding the database.

I hope you have a back up somewhere and your photos aren't lost.

Thank you so much for taking the time to write me back! I really appreciate it. This is my first Mac, and I didn't use Time Machine. I can't believe I was so stupid not to back up externally. I've now learned my lesson.

I did what you said and looked in "Masters." The first folder has the year, 2017. It doesn't have any other years, which makes me think that somehow all of my old pictures, before 2017, are gone. The pictures I had were almost all from my camera, not my iPhone. The only pictures I can find on my computer are from my iPhone.

Once again, I really appreciate your response! Thank you.
[doublepost=1491312899][/doublepost]

Are the photos there in both locations (All Photos in iCloud Web and on your phone, if you haven't deleted them) but the albums are empty?

I assume you've logged out/in of iCloud both on your phone and on the web.

Thank you for responding! I did log in and out and still can't find them.

 

[ftaok]

Thank you so much for taking the time to write me back! I really appreciate it. This is my first Mac, and I didn't use Time Machine. I can't believe I was so stupid not to back up externally. I've now learned my lesson.

I did what you said and looked in "Masters." The first folder has the year, 2017. It doesn't have any other years, which makes me think that somehow all of my old pictures, before 2017, are gone. The pictures I had were almost all from my camera, not my iPhone. The only pictures I can find on my computer are from my iPhone.

Once again, I really appreciate your response! Thank you.
[doublepost=1491312899][/doublepost]
Thank you for responding! I did log in and out and still can't find them.

Still not all is lost. If this is your first Mac, it's likely that your photos are still there in the 2017 folder. The 2017 indicates the year in which the photos were imported into iPhoto or Photos, not when they were taken.

If you haven't already, keep going deeper and deeper into the folder structure until you reach your photos. Hopefully, they're still there.

 

[HDFan]

The pictures I had were almost all from my camera,

Were the pictures recorded on your camera SD card? If by some miracle you have cards around from earlier years, even if formatted there are recovery tools. If you've overwritten the whole card with new pictures this won't work. If only a few pictures written then partial recovery might be possible, but it is very tedious ...

 

[Tashi12345]

Thank you both so much for your replies. I couldn't find the pictures anywhere, but then I remembered that I had uploaded most of my pictures to CVS and Walgreens in order to print them. I went on those sites and all of those pictures were still there, so I got a majority of my pictures back. Yay!!! Now I'm going to back them all up on a flash drive.

 

[alebs]

Thank you! The same happened to me and your explanation saved me!

Are you using iPhoto or Photos on your Mac?

Don't give up, your photos might still be somewhere.

Here's what I would do first.

1. Go to your User Folder/Pictures and see if iPhoto Library or Photos Library is still there. If so, Copy that file onto a fresh external hard drive, just to have a fresh back up. If you don't have a drive big enough for the library, that could be a good sign. Might mean your photos are still there. See next step.

2. Check to see the size of the library file. It should be many many gigs. If the size is smaller than it should be, maybe you have issues.

3. Check your backups (either a cloned drive or a Time Machine backup). Check the library file on the back up to see if the file size is what it should be.

4. Now, assuming you have a backup, the next step would be to right click on the Library file and select "Show Package Contents". From there, you should be able to navigate the file structure of the library. Look in a folder called "Masters" and drill down to see if your photos are still there.

4a. If they are, maybe it's just as simple as a corrupted database file. To rebuild the database file, open iPhoto/Photos while holding both the CMD-OPTION keys down. You'll get a dialog that will step you through rebuilding the database.

I hope you have a back up somewhere and your photos aren't lost.