#IPHOTO LIBRARY MANAGER QUIT IPHOTO HOW TO#
#IPHOTO LIBRARY MANAGER QUIT IPHOTO MAC#

Drag the 'bad' folder ('Media' in our example) to the trash.In the Finder, use command-tilde and enter /Volumes to display the drives window.Unmount the FireWire drive if it's running by ejecting any mounted partitions and unplug it.Quit iPhoto if it's running (and make sure you have any images from the 'bad' location exported to a safe location).To get the old library and albums back, it's a relatively straightforward process: You can see if you have this problem by simply looking at the Volumes folder in the Finder - there shouldn't be any folder icons, and you should not have a '1' after your drive names unless you put it there yourself. This name does not match the iPhoto prefs, so nothing from the drive is displayed. Since 'Media' in the Volumes folder is now already used (by the newly created folders), when the FireWire drive comes online it is named 'Media 1'. Remounting the FireWire drive does not solve the problem because the FireWire drive will actually now mount with a new name. The reason that iPhoto continues to see the same 'newly imported' images each time it is run is because that's where the Prefs file is telling it to look.

#IPHOTO LIBRARY MANAGER QUIT IPHOTO HOW TO#

Once that was done, it was time to tackle problem number two - how to get iPhoto working normally again. To make sure we saved the 'new' images, I had him select all of them from within iPhoto and export them to the desktop. In that window, there were several volume icons (disks with globes on top of them) along with one lone folder icon for 'Media', which then contained another folder for 'images', which then contained his newly created iPhoto library. This opens a window to the Volumes directory (which contains all mounted drive volumes). To see them, I had my friend use Go -> Go to Folder (command-tilde) in the Finder and enter /Volumes as the destination. This answers question number one - where did the new imports go? They were all sitting in the newly created (but invisible from the normal Finder) /Volumes/Media/images folder structure. So the system simply creates a new folder structure matching the specified path in /Volumes, and iPhoto launches as usual. Volumes/Media/images/When iPhoto goes to open this location, it finds that it doesn't exist (since the FireWire drive isn't mounted). In this example, the prefs file for iPhoto ( in ~/Library/Preferences) would contain these lines: RootDirectory For ease of example, let's assume that they were stored in a folder named images on a partition named Media on the FireWire drive. In the prefs file, the location had been altered to point to the now-missing FireWire drive. So when he connected his camera, iPhoto launched and checked its preferences for where to find the image library.

The problem my friend ran into is basically that the system did what it needed to do to get the job done. For those of you who don't know what the problem was and would like to know, read the rest of the article for the cause of the problem and the relatively easy solution - although I will admit I was stumped for a few minutes myself until doing a bit of sleuthing in the Terminal!

Those of you who are familiar with the way OS X operates probably have already figured out what happened. First, out of curiosity, where were the new photos stored, as he couldn't find them using Sherlock or the Finder? Second, and much more important, how could he get the original library and albums to show up in iPhoto again? He could see that they were still on the FireWire drive, but iPhoto didn't seem to know anything about them. Later, with the FireWire drive connected again, he relaunched iPhoto and was surprised to find that while his 'new' images showed up, his older library and albums were nowhere to be seen. He imported the new images and then quit iPhoto. My friend knew the drive was off, so he wasn't surprised that iPhoto didn't show his existing library and albums.

#IPHOTO LIBRARY MANAGER QUIT IPHOTO MAC#

All was working well until one day when he connected his camera to the Mac while the FireWire drive was powered down. He had originally set up his iPhoto library on his removable FireWire drive (using this hint). A friend called up a bit confused over the behavior of iPhoto.

Iphoto library manager quit iphoto