So I just lost all my pictures...

All 6,000 of them. I thought time machine backed them up, apparently not. After formatting the hard drive and installing the new os, I check out the time machine directory and to my utter disbelief, nothing's there. After feeling the equivalent of losing an arm, I realized I had set up iPhoto to sync all the pictures with my iPhone.

All is not lost I guess, but I'm guessing that iTunes dumbs down the picture quality and resolution to better fit the iPhone's screen, which is a far cry from the 8 megapixel shots I usually take. SUCKS. Now if I sync with the computer, I will erase the content of the iPhone.

Anybody know how crappy pictures get when transfered to the iPhone? Is there a way to get them out? And will I be SOL with crappy res pictures dating back to 1999?

 

Sad!

you can use one of iPhone browsers to get your pics!

 

Do you have a Jailbroken iPhone?

 

this is why I never trust backup software, from any company. nothing beats copy and paste.

 

There are programs that can get photos off a HFS(+) file format Hard Drive.

I had a customer who had a G4, who upgraded his OS, used it for 3 months and realised his pictures wen't there...

Managed to get 40,000 of his pictures back. So there is hope.

 

You can restore your previous partitions after reformatting (at the cost of the later ones) using TESTDISK (available as linux liveCD). Just make it very carefully.

Though, I don't know if it works with mac filesystems. However, there should be restoration programs for mac, as there are those for windows partitons.

 

Yeah, Time Machine is an easy to use, convenient backup program thats perfect for people that don't really need backups. For anyone else I'd recommend a real backup package written by folks that are serious about backups and have a proven track record.

I know it does not help now but you might consider a service like Flickr (Pro is $29 a year) for unlimited online picture storage, or MOZY ($5/mo) for unlimited online backup.

For local backups SuperDuper is hard to beat.

 

Nope. 2.2.1

Yah, I actually feel like an idiot since I have mobile me, I could've just uploaded all my albums. That's what I get for being lazy with time machine. I know I'm not trusting that again.

 

Yeah from what I hear time machine isn't the best for real back ups, it's really meant just for people that never back up and are not tech savvy to set up a real program to do it. And for people that accidentally delete files. (Never had that problem)

 

So you never did a single actual backup with Time Machine? You never had the time machine icon turning around in your menu bar?

 

There is one way: SSH.

 

That's the weird part. It's been performing backups since november of last year. I've checked the menu bar icon, and just to make sure backed up again with TM before shutting the computer down one last time. Checked exceptions and it was empty. Checked the folders and most of my User folder was missing... So no clue what happened. All backups were done "successfully".

Oh well, the osx honeymoon had to end sometime. I'll just get a real backup program to avoid future problems.

Don't I have to jailbrake it to get ssh? And to jailbrake it I have to wipe the device... which I don't want to do since what I have in my iPhone is pretty much the last straw.

 

So, nothing shows up when you launch Time Machine and point it to the external HD onto which you performed the backups?

 

Well yeah, it shows stuff, just not my pictures, and other less important stuff, like documents (which I backed up with iDisk, phew!). It acts as if I had made an excemption for TM to not back up those folders, which of course I never did such a thing!

 

I think you can still access the photos from your iPhone by using the application called DiskAid. Download it and connect your iPhone by USB and using the file browser you can access the photos in the folder 100Apple. You can then copy it from the device to your computer.

 

This might be a long shot, but:

Did you have your pictures in iPhoto? If so, have you tried starting iPhoto and then entering Time Machine?

The photos are stored in the iPhoto Library file, and will not show up as regular files if you browse the Time Machine backup folders.

You will need to right click the iPhoto Library file and choose Show Package Contents...
(from the time machine disk)

Like this:
/Backups.backupdb/ your username and computer/2009-2-2 or whatever date/Macintosh HD/Users/ your user/Pictures/iPhoto Library

 

Fez, I totally understand that you are frustrated and for good reason but you're not thinking straight. I certainly hope that you are just overlooking something and end up finding your pics but try and have an open mind, it IS possible that you could've made a mistake somewhere along the line and your pics were never backed up in the first place.
TM is a very good and stable backup program built within OS X. This same thing could've happened on any backup solution. TM is just as real as any backup solution.

 

Yes, if you use iPhoto, then your pictures will not be accessible from Finder in Time Machine. You will have to access Time Machine via the iPhoto.app (just launch iPhoto and go Time Machine). You will then be able to browse your backed up photos by events, location, faces etc. depending on the version of iPhoto you use.

 

I hope the above advice works for you and you get your pictures back!

I echo what others say which is you should upload them to some site. Personally I use smugmug. I also have a desktop where all my pictures are stored and then that backed up to an external drive. I also have my pics on another external drive and my MacBook...You can never be too sure

 

Thank you, I will try that.

Hi, thanks for the suggestion. I did have them iPhoto 08. I am familiar with it's library file. What you mentioned was the first thing I did, nothing happened. Checking the contents of the backup (home folder) yielded only about 185MB worth of data, which is a long way from the 5+ gigs of pictures.

Yeah I guess you're right. I guess you could say that it's a problem with any automatic backup solution. You can never REALLY know, you know? I'll just do manual backups from now on.

Thank you all for the advice. From now on I will just upload everything to mobile me, and manually copy them to an external drive. I will try DiskAid to see if I can get my pictures out of the iPhone. Again, thanks all.

 

Epic sucks. You can download photobucket for your iphone then upload all 6000 shots LOL that will suck but its all i can think of.

 

have you tried cdnalsi suggestion?

 

Yeah I did, but the library file was about 100MB instead of 5GB, I've used computers all my life and I have no idea what could've happened.

 

So...what did you see in the iPhoto app when you launched Time Machine with iPhoto in the foreground?

 

You might actually be able to recover them. I am relatively new to OS X but normally when you delete or format a hard drive you are simply marking new space for use. Delete a word file that was 1mb you aren't actually removing the file until it has been written over sometimes more than once.

I have never had to work with data recovery on Windows or Mac but I know there is software out there. Simple google search for data recovery should lead you somewhere but be warned most of the data reovery software is expensive and you may not see a single picture returned.