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Accessing Photos from iPhoto on Old Hard Drive

We have a couple old Mac hard drives (pre-cloud) with photos we are trying to access. I have one hard drive plugged into my MacBook via an adapter converter and have attempted to access the old photos by right clicking on the iPhoto icon and clicking “Show Package Contents,” following directions from a previous thread. My problem is there is neither an “Originals” or a “Masters” file once I do this. Is there another option I should look for, or another folder those files should be in?


Thanks in advance!

Earlier Mac models

Posted on Aug 7, 2023 2:16 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Aug 8, 2023 3:18 AM

Have you tried to open your iPhoto Libraries in Photos? Which system version do you have installed on your Mac?


It will depend on the version of iPhoto that you have been using to work with the library and on your system version, how the Photos.app can access the photos in your iPhoto Library. See: How to access Media in iPhoto Libraries … - Apple Community


Fotos for Mac can work with iPhoto Libraries from iPhoto '09 (version 8.x.x.) and iPhoto '11 (version 9.x.x). Older iPhoto Libraries need to be prepared with the iPhoto Library upgrader tool. iPhoto '11: About the Library Upgrader . This tool contains 32bit code can only run macOS 10.14 or earlier. If your iPhoto Library is from an older iPhoto version you will need to prepare the old libraries on a mac with an older system version.


  • On OS X 10.10.3 Yosemite to macOS 12 Monterey you can open iPhoto '09 and iPhoto '11 Libraries in Fotos and convert them to Photos Libraries for easy access to your photos. This will preserve the structure of the library as albums and folders.
  • On macOS 13 you can no longer migrate iPhoto Libraries to Photos in Photos, but you can import the photos and videos into Photos Libraries. But you will lose the structure of the library.







2 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Aug 8, 2023 3:18 AM in response to Katok40

Have you tried to open your iPhoto Libraries in Photos? Which system version do you have installed on your Mac?


It will depend on the version of iPhoto that you have been using to work with the library and on your system version, how the Photos.app can access the photos in your iPhoto Library. See: How to access Media in iPhoto Libraries … - Apple Community


Fotos for Mac can work with iPhoto Libraries from iPhoto '09 (version 8.x.x.) and iPhoto '11 (version 9.x.x). Older iPhoto Libraries need to be prepared with the iPhoto Library upgrader tool. iPhoto '11: About the Library Upgrader . This tool contains 32bit code can only run macOS 10.14 or earlier. If your iPhoto Library is from an older iPhoto version you will need to prepare the old libraries on a mac with an older system version.


  • On OS X 10.10.3 Yosemite to macOS 12 Monterey you can open iPhoto '09 and iPhoto '11 Libraries in Fotos and convert them to Photos Libraries for easy access to your photos. This will preserve the structure of the library as albums and folders.
  • On macOS 13 you can no longer migrate iPhoto Libraries to Photos in Photos, but you can import the photos and videos into Photos Libraries. But you will lose the structure of the library.







Accessing Photos from iPhoto on Old Hard Drive

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