We have a crisis folks. Ok, we’ll not a total crisis just yet as I take precautions.
Yesterday we had a sudden power outage and of course the wife had about 17 applications open on her Mac, one of them being iPhoto. The thing I HATE about iPhoto is it stores all the pictures in the actual program and when the program has a problem then YOU have a problem as all the picture are stored inside it.
Now, the wife has around 140,000 pictures which corresponds to about 200 Gigabytes so anything I try to do to fix the issue is going to take a while. Furthermore you cannot keep the Iphoto program on the actual laptop as it is much too large and would take up all the laptop space. So I put Iphoto on an external drive and USB’d it to the MAC.
Well, power goes out and the Mac being a laptop switches to battery power, but the external drive doesn’t have external power so out it goes.
We turn the laptop back on, open up Iphoto and everything is gone!
Yea, no big deal, I’ll brush up on the fixes which will take about 2 minutes.
I’m presented with a couple of options and try the first two with no luck. I then try the repair/import feature (forget exactly what it was called) and it looks like it will work. However, importing 140,000 pictures is apparently going to take all year.
Ok, so I stop that process and think I’ll just back up from Time Machine which is my second line of defense. As Iphoto is 200 Gigabytes I bring the laptop into my office, and connect everything with wires because doing it over wireless would take all week in which time the wife would most likely use the microwave which disrupts the signal and the restore would go straight to hell.
Being safe I thought I’d rename the current Iphoto to “IPhoto OLD” and then import the backup but I noticed if I change the name all the Iphoto backup names will change to “IPhoto OLD” as well! WTF??? WHY???? Stupid MAC!!!! If it changes to the same name then I cannot have two versions, the current one I’m having trouble with as well as the imported one.
Soooooooooooooooo, I go into Time Machine, go back to yesterday, click Iphoto and click Restore. Now, I did that when I started this post and it is still “preparing.”
OKAY, I just turned around and Mac offered me the solution to the two version issue I just described above where I can replace and delete, keep original or keep both. Well, ok Mac, you’re regaining my trust….. I clicked keep both to stay on the safe side.
I see that it is copying and is only going to take half a day apparently as were up to 200MB out of the total 198.47 GB. whew……
So, it looks like this is working which is good. But the moment of truth will come when it is copied and I tell MAC to use the backup version for IPhoto. I’m worried that the folder structure won’t be in place as the wife had a very nice and organized folder structure. Actually, I’m quite nervous because due to my experience things could be bad here and I don’t understand how the Iphoto database relates to the actual pictures and how folders are created in said database. Is it something that happens in the actual Iphoto program or somewhere on the Mac computer? (Again Iphoto is on an external Hard drive).
The time is now 9:20am on 11.15.2014 and I’ll update this post with the outcome.
But before I do that let me tell you why I like windows
– All my data is stored on a data only drive – Completely safe from when Windowz decides to go berserk.
– A program screws up? – scrap it, use another.
– All of Windows screws up? – Delete – reinstall. – “Throw it in the gutter, and reinstall another.”
Well, iPhoto finally transferred about 1:30pm so it took about four hours.
Result? Well, I have to give Mac props. The backup worked perfectly with minimal hassle. I opened IPhoto and it asked to repair first which I let it do, then it needed to update the thumbnails.
Now everything is back and the only slight inconvenience is that the video thumbnails aren’t showing but that isn’t a huge issue at the moment. I always like it when a backup actually works as intended after having many many bad experiences with crap software on Windows. The last time I used backup software it translated all the files into some shitty proprietary format that was impossible to read without the original backup software. This is a problem because I had to completely ditch the previous Windows install and needed to redownload the software.
Well, I had to buy it again because I lost the purchase key which was bad but not terrible. The terrible thing was the software wouldn’t let me connect to the backup which was created using the same software! I’m sure there was probably a very complex and difficult fix that only the designer of the software could figure out, but as I did not design the software the only option left to me is to call customer support. But as everyone knows, crap software comes with crap support and they don’t know anything.
What was this terrible software you ask? Memeo Instant Backup. Complete crap!!!!!!!!!!
Now I just use FreeFileSync which just mirrors the folder with all my data in it. This is what I want, no fuss, just an exact mirror of my data folder, no nonsense.
Ok, I got off track there. I still hate iPhoto but am give Mac props for a backup system that actually works. Time Machine saved the day!
