Photos can't repair library (Catalina)

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iHaveTeeth Author

Level 1

10 points

Photos can't repair library (Catalina)

I'm on a 2017 MacBook Pro running 10.15.1

My Library is on a (HFS+) external drive plugged into a 2012 Mac mini (10.14.6) which I'm using as a home server.

I do not use iCloud. Library size is about 260GB.

This setup has been stable for the last 2 years.

I've checked all permissions, sharing, volume ownership etc. since updating - everything is working fine (eg. screen control of server, home sharing, file transfers etc.)

ok, so I recently take the plunge and update to Catalina on my Macbook - on opening 'Photos', it does it's 'Updating library' thing.

I get this:

I hit repair, I get this (error 1000?):

What is this (1000) error? I've searched and couldn't find anything about it.

To make things worse I can't get a un 'repaired' version from Time machine because this happened last night, and today I'm looking and the only backups are from today and it's the same file (I need a bigger Time machine drive *bangs head on desk).

Is my best bet doing a manual rebuild from the 'Masters' folder from the 'Package content'?

I did manage to make a copy of the 'repaired' version before I attempted the repair a few more times - seems that the masters folder on the version that had multiple repair passes contains considerably less data (220BG vs 146GB).

Can anyone help me out here?

MacBook Pro 15", macOS 10.15

Posted on Oct 31, 2019 5:19 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

léonie

Level 10

197,375 points

Oct 31, 2019 6:41 AM in response to iHaveTeeth

Have you tried to plug the drive with the library directly into yourMacBook pro and to repair the library without the network access?

And enable the "ignore ownership" flag before you try to access the Photos Library, as described here:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201517

Recreating your library just from the "Originals" folder in the library package will be difficult, because Photos is no longer storing the originals unmodified. It is messing up the filenames and the creation dates. If there is still a folder "Masters" in one version of your library, save the Masters folder on a different backup drive. The originals in the Masters folder on Mojave have been saved exactly as we imported them and are more suitable to recreate the library from, but the new "Originals" folder in Photos 5.0 is hard to navigate.

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Answer 2

iHaveTeeth Author

Level 1

10 points

Oct 31, 2019 6:25 AM in response to iHaveTeeth

Sorry, correction here:

"seems that the masters folder on the version that had multiple repair passes contains considerably MORE data (220BG vs 146GB)."

Also just noticed there is also a folder called 'originals' in library package. In library that has had multiple repair passes this folder is about 14GB, on the one that was only repaired once, it's 89GB

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Answer 3

iHaveTeeth Author

Level 1

10 points

Nov 1, 2019 4:00 AM in response to léonie

"Have you tried to plug the drive with the library directly into yourMacBook pro and to repair the library without the network access?"

YES!! This did it! Thank you! Photos successfully opened the Library file when the drive was plugged in directly to the Macbook.

Once that was sorted I hooked the drive back up to the server, re-opened Photos (with 'Option' click) and linked to the Library location on the server - It's now working perfectly.

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Answer 4

léonie

Level 10

197,375 points

Nov 1, 2019 5:25 AM in response to iHaveTeeth

That is great. You're welcome 😊

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Photos can't repair library (Catalina)

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