cannot repair photos library or library permission

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Level 1

9 points

cannot repair photos library or library permission

I have migrated to a MacBook Pro on Catalina from a MacBook with High Sierra. The old Mac has a photos library stored on a Windows 10 machine (~830gb of photos on a 2TB exFAT drive). Trying to open Photos, I am presented with an error that the app cannot open the library, and needs to repair it. I let the repair do it’s thing, and eventually I get an error that permissions need to be repaired. So I let that do it’s thing, and eventually either the app will seize up and I need to force quit or the app will return an error, and then close. Not sure what to do at this point.

MacBook Pro

Posted on May 18, 2020 8:44 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Yer_Man

Level 10

163,872 points

May 19, 2020 12:31 AM in response to Ramosxn40

Here's your issue:

 exFAT drive

Photo libraries for iPhoto. Aperture and now Photos all require a disk that is formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled) or apfs and directly connected to the Mac. Running on an inappropriately formatted drive risks these kinds of issues an well as database corruption and dataloss.

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Answer 2

léonie

Level 10

197,321 points

May 19, 2020 1:36 AM in response to Ramosxn40

TD is right. You can keep files and folders on an exFAT volume, but not a Photos Library. It has never been supported to do so - it may appear to be working for a while, and you will not notice that the library has been damaged until it is too late.

The requirements for an external volume are described here: Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support

Move your Photos Library to a correctly formatted volume. If you should encounter error messages when copying the library look here: How to avoid the Error -36 when copying a Photos Library - Apple Community

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cannot repair photos library or library permission

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