Q: iPhoto Library transfer problem Leopard to Snow Leopard
I have a G4 Mini running Leopard (10.5.8). About a year ago I accidentally moved the iPhoto library to a flash drive, instead of just copying it as I had intended, so after that I could only view my pictures in iPhoto via the flash drive.
Now I have an Intel Mini running Snow Leopard. I want to get my photos into iPhoto on this computer. I found this discussion answer as to how to do that at this link: iPhoto 11 library: from lion to snow leopard
"-- Connect the two Macs together (network, firewire target mode, etc) or use an external hard drive formed Mac OS extended (journaled) and drag the iPhoto library intact as a single entity from the old Mac to the pictures folder of the new Mac - launch iPhoto on the new mac and it will open the library and convert it as needed and you will be ready move forward."
I checked my flash drive, and unfortunately it is formatted as MS-DOS (FAT 32), not MacOS Extended Journaled. I'm afraid if I put the i Photo Library that's on it into the pictures folder of the Intel Mini it will cause a BIG problem. Will it? I'm guessing that if I tried to reformat the flash drive, I'd lose the content on it, right?
If so, the only other place I have my photos is on a bootable external drive with OS 10.5.8 that I've been backing the G4 mini up to it regularly with Time Machine. Is there any way I can make use of this to get my photos onto the Intel mini? If so, how? I don't actually know how to use Time Machine, so giving me specific steps be extremely important and very helpful.
As a senior citizen, I'm way out of my depth here, so any ideas/help will be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
Mac mini, Mac OS X (10.6.8), 2.26 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 2 GB RAM
Posted on Aug 14, 2016 8:15 AM
Again if you have no photos in iPhotos on the new machine then you can replace the existing empty iPhoto library with the one from your previous system (be sure iPhoto is not running)
As originally answered
As a start connect the flast drive to the new Mac and drag the iPhoto library to the pcitures folder and launch iPhoto - does it work? - it might and if it does test it and you sholud be fine - if it does not then post back for help in restoring the TM backup
LN
Posted on Aug 16, 2016 9:12 AM

