Q: Migrating Photos AND iPhoto Libraries to external hard drive
iMac 21.5inch 1tb (Late 2012) on OSX El Cap using Photos
Hi
Now I've run out of space on the Mac, I have moved the Photos Library to a 2tb external drive, deleted the original library and repointed Photos to the new drive (works fine). The Photos library was 650Gb and it is identical on the new drive.
I updated from iPhoto to Photos in May 2015. I understand that Photos points to the old iPhoto library as well as the new Photo library in order to save space. But here's the space problem:
Photos library on external drive 650Gb
iPhoto library still on Mac 490Gb
On the 'About This Mac' photo and video storage shows as 305Gb!!
How can the combined Photos and iPhoto be larger than the capacity of the Mac? And how can the storage be a completely different figure to either- especially when I deleted the entire Photo library.
My concern is that I am about to move and delete the old iPhoto migrated library but will Photos work properly- because it won't be linked anymore?
Thought I knew what I was doing but the storage differences have unnerved me completely!
Thanks for any help!
iMac, OS X El Capitan (10.11.3)
Posted on Feb 16, 2016 8:30 AM