Deleted and Erased Photos Still Remain in Library

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Level 1

8 points

Deleted and Erased Photos Still Remain in Library

MacBook Pro M3 Max 64GB

Sonoma 14.3.1

Photos Version 9.0 (630.0.150)

My wife and I have terabytes of photos. Part of the process in managing these, I'm splitting Photos libraries by date to create smaller, less cumbersome ones. Note that none of these libraries are the Photos system library nor are they shared.

Say I have a Photos library A with photos from 2000 to 2024. I want to split this into two libraries - Lib A: 2000 thru 2014 and LibB: 2015 thru 2024. Do do this (just looking at LibB) I've:

duplicated library A and renamed copy to B
Create Smart Album in LibB with photos within a date range 2000 thru 2014
Delete photos from the Smart Album
Erase photos from Recently Deleted

Problem - while LibB now only shows photos from 2015 thru 2024 and Photos library info says it contains 8K photos and it's 30GB, the library package size still shows 500GB AND, when I attempt to merge LibB into another library, ALL 60K photos from 2000 thru 2024 show up in Review for Import.

I have copied LibB to another drive. Same issue. I am currently repairing this library to see if this fixes the issue. Any help and advice would be greatly appreciated!

Posted on Mar 9, 2024 8:13 AM

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Answer 1

Chick-Deb Author

Level 1

8 points

Mar 12, 2024 9:39 PM in response to Richard.Taylor

Hi Richard - well, Photos Library repair has improved the situation in at least one case. In the example I stated, LibB was reduced in size approximately close to 30GB (much closer that previous 500GB) and the photos that were supposed to be erased seemed to really be erased as they did not import when I attempted a merge a second time post-repair. This is better! However, the library sizes still vary between Photos->info and Finder (not even attempting ls or du of the package). A larger library that I created from this splitting project (call it LibC) did not have as significant a size correction after a Photos Library repair. Seems buggy to me...

So when you say,

...and I didn't have the pictures still in the Library.

do you mean you didn't see them when looking via Photos? As I mentioned, when I opened LibB with Photos, I too could not see any of the photos that I had deleted and erased. They weren't in the library, albums, or Recently Deleted (which was not even present after my erasure). The *only* way I knew that they were still there is because of the HUGE library size (via Finder) and when I tried to merge that library they older, erased photos came up in Review for Import - 60K of them!!!

BTW - my libraries are so large that each action sometimes takes hours to perform. So, that's why I haven't done a lot more testing yet. I will keep results here as I continue with this project. I do think that Apple has a bug here that needs addressing.

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Answer 2

Mar 13, 2024 1:13 PM in response to Chick-Deb

So when you say,

...and I didn't have the pictures still in the Library.

You're right-- that was pretty un-clear. I meant in the original Library. sorry...

It sometimes takes a while for the reported size of files, and especially packages like the Photos Library, to accurately reflect the amount of disk space they take up.

I'm surprised that any of these steps should take hours. Is your Library on an external drive? If so, how is that drive formatted? APFS, Mac OS Extended (Journaled), or what? And how large is the available space on the drives you're using?

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Answer 3

Chick-Deb Author

Level 1

8 points

Mar 13, 2024 2:11 PM in response to Richard.Taylor

All of the libraries I've been talking about are on external drives, all USB of some variety (3.0, 3.2) and between 1 to 5 TB, and even an SSD. The libraries have been upgraded/converted from older iPhoto and Aperture libraries going thru required Mac OS's (and supported file formats) that allow conversion. All drives at this last stage, where I've been discussion the issue, are formatted APFS. Before splitting, one library was just over 500GB. I'm trying to reduce their sizes to make them more manageable and then back them up.

Thanks for the reply!

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Answer 4

Mar 10, 2024 9:48 AM in response to Chick-Deb

How is this going? I've done the same thing to split Libraries, in pretty much the same way, and I didn't have the pictures still in the Library. Has it resolved itself?

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Deleted and Erased Photos Still Remain in Library

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