Cannot open photos library from external hard drive

Question

Cannot open photos library from external hard drive

When I try to open my photos library that is stored on my external hard drive, I get the following message: There is not enough disk space to migrate your library. It is estimated that you need at least 63GB of additional free space." I have 591GB of free space on my computer, the external hard drive is 'My passport for Mac' and I have tried using the Option key when I open Photos to choose which library I want to use. Any ideas how to open it?

Thank-you!!

iMac Pro

Posted on Sep 9, 2019 12:08 PM

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Answer 1

markwmsn

Level 6

15,029 points

Sep 9, 2019 8:46 PM in response to KellyGirouard

That message (particularly the word "migrate") implies that the library on the external hard drive is actually an old iPhoto library, not a Photos library.

How much space is available on the external hard drive (not on the whole computer or on the internal drive)?

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Answer 2

Sep 12, 2019 8:50 PM in response to markwmsn

Hi:

Yes it was an old iPhoto library. The space on the external hard drive is 48 GB. When I tried to open it again on my old computer with iPhoto on it, it opened right away.

The problem is I want to get rid of that computer and keep all the photos from that computer on an external hard drive then open them when I need them.

Thanks!

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Answer 3

markwmsn

Level 6

15,029 points

Sep 12, 2019 9:05 PM in response to KellyGirouard

OK. You have an external drive with 48GB free, and you need an additional 63GB free, for a total of 111GB (plus some working room)

If you cannot make 63GB more space available on that external drive, you could copy the iPhoto library to another external drive with at least 120GB free space and migrate that copy.

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Answer 4

Sep 12, 2019 9:24 PM in response to markwmsn

So then once I have enough room on an external hard drive it will open the entire iPhoto library in Photos? (Sorry, just want to make sure before I spend the money on a new hard drive, I was looking at a 2 TB drive.

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Answer 5

markwmsn

Level 6

15,029 points

Sep 13, 2019 10:39 PM in response to KellyGirouard

Yes, that's right. Just make sure that the new drive is formatted for Macs, not a semi-compatible Windows format. Also, you cannot have the Photos library on a volume that is also (or was) used as a Time Machine backup volume.

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Answer 6

Sep 13, 2019 11:39 PM in response to KellyGirouard

One option is to keep using iPhoto so no conversion to Photos format is necessary. iPhoto still works in Mojave. I am not sure about Catalina.

But it might be a good idea to move on and copy the library to a larger volume, do the conversion, and copy the converted library back.

...I much preferred iPhoto but a few months ago I cleanly (*) updated to Photos to make troubleshooting easier (exporting album updates via iTunes to an iPad ignored random images -- I'm not yet sure if that is now fixed).

(*) I deleted the old iPhoto library and re-imported files to a brand-new Photos library. I use Photos as just a viewer and an extra backup. My main archive is in folders on external HDs.

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Cannot open photos library from external hard drive

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