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User profile for user: rory241
rory241 Author
User level: Level 1
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How to move older photos off Mac to external HD?

I have about 5 years of photos on my mac and its running out of space. I'd like to move older photos to an external USB drive, but not sure how to do it. Is it possible to partition the photos library into multiple libraries, such as each year (2015 library, 2016 library, 2017 library, etc..)? I would like to keep the most recent photos (last 2 years) on my mac, but if I need older photos I can just plug in the external drive.


Any help is greatly appreciated!

MacBook Pro 15", macOS 10.13

Posted on May 17, 2019 3:00 PM

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User profile for user: rcosta887
rcosta887
User level: Level 4
3,604 points

Posted on May 18, 2019 2:25 AM

If you hold down the OPTION key when you click on the Photos app you can create and switch between Photos libraries. If your external USB drive is formatted as HFS+ or APFS (as opposed to FAT32 or ExFAT) you can have a photo library there.


I don't know of any way to automatically split an existing photo library however.


So you could copy your existing photo library to the external drive, and OPTION-open up Photos app and point it to that external-drive-library to make sure it works; then switch back to your internal library and delete everything older than you want to keep on your internal hard drive photo library.


I would strongly suggest first making a Time Machine backup first onto a 2nd (entirely different) drive of your existing Photo library first in case anything ever happens to that 1st external drive you want to start using, and/or in case you delete the wrong photos in the process.

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User profile for user: rcosta887
rcosta887
User level: Level 4
3,604 points

May 18, 2019 2:25 AM in response to rory241

If you hold down the OPTION key when you click on the Photos app you can create and switch between Photos libraries. If your external USB drive is formatted as HFS+ or APFS (as opposed to FAT32 or ExFAT) you can have a photo library there.


I don't know of any way to automatically split an existing photo library however.


So you could copy your existing photo library to the external drive, and OPTION-open up Photos app and point it to that external-drive-library to make sure it works; then switch back to your internal library and delete everything older than you want to keep on your internal hard drive photo library.


I would strongly suggest first making a Time Machine backup first onto a 2nd (entirely different) drive of your existing Photo library first in case anything ever happens to that 1st external drive you want to start using, and/or in case you delete the wrong photos in the process.

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How to move older photos off Mac to external HD?

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