Help
My dear lady has just discovered that despite having her MacBook Air for nearly 2yrs her photos on iPhoto do not appear to have been saved on her Time Capsule.

When she looks into the TC it is reporting the automatic backup of data, but there are no photos in there. For her this is critical as she is getting reports on her MBA that she's reaching fully data storage capacity. No surprise there to me as she has thousands of photos and film on there. Most work related.

Can anyone point this none IT chap in the direction of why the transfer of photos is not taking place on these auto TC backups?
Cheers

i use iPhoto on my mac mini, and my TC backs up the photos

i'm not at home at the moment but i will look at my settings as i know i had to rescue some photos when i had deleted a years worth by accident.

But, if her MBA is saying its running out of memory, its sounds like there is another issue

From my (new to Apple) experience, TC backs up your MBA so should save the information, but when the TC is full it starts overwriting the data, so when this happens it loses the oldest capture and any photos/videos. But if they are still on her MBA then they should be still in her newer captured backups. But that does not free up space by leaving them there.

A TC takes a capture of the current data, so if the MBA is full and she removed photos/video to free up space, then these won't be backed up on the newer captures, so risk losing them when its full and starts deleting (if you have selected that option or the other option is to replace the TC when full)

It sounds like the photos are been stored locally on the MBA, and filling its limited drive space, I had this issue and had to add a additional drive to my Mac Mini, so all my photos are stored on there instead, but i'm still 49gb spare on a 500gb drive, so i think i need to look at it further.

thinking about this also

the iPhotos program doesn't save the photos in the normal way, it has a section called iPhotos Li bray, which unfortunately opens up iPhoto to view them.

The photos are stored elsewhere under a folder called masters

Masters > then year > then month and date and so on, for each year you have files

This is were i found some of my photos, when i imported RAW files, which i then wanted to edit using a different program.

If you go into iPhoto, and select a picture, then EDIT, and select show original in finder, this should take you to the original picture location, which should be MASTER..... and were you need to look on TC

Hi,
Try clicking on the Time Machine icon on the menu bar and then "Open Time Machine Preferences". Click on "Options" and you will see a list of any files that are being excluded from back-up. Maybe jpegs are in there for some reason. If so click on them and then click on "-".

Cheers! John
07 HSE Narvick Black
Land Rover Series One
Triumph Rocket 111 (sadly gone!)

Thanks gents for the inputs.
As she is now asleep - had a lot of night emergencies to attend to - I am on her MBA now. This is where her photos and movies are all residing and are not automatically transferring to the TC.

All the software is in German so direct translation from your ideas take a little longer for me to initiate - it's not the language that's the problem but my lack of IT expertise and familiarity with the MBA OSX. (I only use an iPad)

So what I see is that there is a facility to "Photostream" - this is currently off. It talks about PS to iCloud. She does not have iCloud account nor never will as she fears its lack of security. But do I switch on PS and will that then shunt the photos that are residing in her iPhoto domain over automatically to the TC?

JST
There is nothing on the TC list as "objects not to save". So the TC is geared to save anything shunted to it.

npinks
Under iPhotos menu (top of screen horizontal tab bar - location) there is an option to "export" to other locations using but this only offers to send individuals to a slide show or website have first identified the format.

7,388 is a lot of individual transfers

Now also in iPhoto screen on left side is a vertical menu. at here is also a reference to " Photostream" and when opened it seeks permission to ALLOW which then jumps to a Photostream window, which talks about "Activating" that facility. Not done that as seeking advice first.

It list iCloud (she will not) then it talks about other devices (iPhone and other Apple Computers but does not specifically state Time Capsule.

What do you know at this point?

If I proceed here will it recognise the TC?
i

Photostream is just to share photos between devices,

i.e. photos on my phone are streamed to my ipad and mac, nothing to do with TC

its good, but when your out with lads on the beers, its a bit risky if you snap a mate in a compromising position

A little more research indicates that "P hotostream" only functions via iCloud - so that's not the option.

Something must be preventing the TimeCapsule from not receiving the photos, or, the MacBook Air is not configured correctly to shunt photos across.

Checked the TC capacity and it had 1.78TB free space left from 2TB capacity.

So have gone back to basics. Reset TC and have just started a new backup of her MacBookAir - system tells me this may take a few hours
Really

Breakfast over and it is still running the MacBook Air to Time Capsule full back-up. It is not hard wired as there is no Ethernet connection socket on her MBA, so the process is very much slower via WiFi. Current status is 17GB to go and under 2hrs it states. Phew.

My only wish now is that it has transferred all her medical photos. If it hasn't then I'll simply have to travel to the nearest Apple retailer - 90kms away and it's snowing. The things I do for that woman.

Okay - the back-up from MBA to TC has completed successfully. Cross referencing all file sizes between the two devices there is an exact match.

However, when accessing the TC to look in there and open the iPhoto library (contents 74GB) it will not open. But, when opening iPhoto on the MBA by clicking iPhoto on the menu bar it allows access to all of the photos in the iPhoto library held on her MBA.

So what is preventing access to the iPhoto library on the Time Capsule as it is on this file on the TC that cannot be accessed

Note: all other files on the TC open.

iPhoto stores photos in the iPhoto Library which for some reason can only be opened in iPhoto on your MBA

With it stating that 74GB is the file size, im confident that you have backed up the photos etc, if that equates to the same size library on the MBA (not sure if it compresses the size)

You can locate the files, by bypassing iPhoto Library in finder, by searching for the master files, or view original when menu clicking the photo.

iphoto, saves the original photo in a master file, then recreates a smaller file sized photo for the iPhoto program for viewing, I had a issue were i could see the photo in iPhoto, but the original had been deleted by another program and user error.

this might shed a little light on iPhoto and how it stores files, especially the linked page

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5036363?start=0&tstart=0

But i think you might be getting mixed up on how TC works, its a backup system, not a data storage system

Day 1 >MBA backup to TC files 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10

Day 2 >MBA backup to TC files 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10

on day 3 you work on file 6 which is bigger so TC backs up the newer larger file

Day 3 >MBA backup to TC files 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10

on day 4 you accidental delete file 6 on the MBA

Day 4 > MBA backup to TC files 1,2,3,4,5, ,7,8,9,10

On day 5 you realise you have lost file 6

Day 5 > MBA files are 1,2,3,4,5, ,7,8,9,10

So you open TC, roll back to day 3 and restore file 6 and redo the work you should have saved on day 4

Day 5 >backup files 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10

And so on

But when the TC gets full at some point in the future, it will tell you and you either get a new drive, or it starts overwriting the oldest data

So Day 2001 it overwrites day 1, then day 2, then 3, then 4, then 5 etc etc

So if day 4, is the day you delete all the pictures and videos to free up local drive space on the MBA, eventually in the future you will not have a back up of them if you select overwrite as a option and will have lost those photos as the backups prior to the day you deleted them have been lost.

If the Photos and Videos have filled up the local drive on the MBA, you need to transfer these off to free up space, you either export the original pictures to a DVD, or another hard drive and keep that hard drive safe


Hope thats clear, I have tried to do it in a non PC way to help you understand

I appreciate your "idiot" guide npinks - thanks.

Now I need to work through your guide so that I fully understand that process.

However, if the TC allows me to access and open to view every other file except the iPhoto library then logic dictates that something is wrong with the manner in which her Ladyship has set up iPhoto on her MBA to apparently "lock out" the iPhoto library on the TC.

Additionally, if as you say the TC is not a data storage device then what is its functionality - purely as a temporary depository of the MBA's content is inviting disaster at an unknown juncture in the future. That's misleading when referenced to Apple's marketing material that warrants that you'll never need another storage device in the future.

The "what if" senario is that her MBA suffers an unrecoverable failure tomorrow. Then new MBA is purchased. How does one download the "stored" data on the TC onto her new MBA? I cannot see that process - download from TC - on her MBA right now! This is very troubling.

However, many thanks for your input.