I moved my photos library to a new external hard drive and a now can not open photos with new or old library!!!

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I moved my photos library to a new external hard drive and a now can not open photos with new or old library!!!

Following the procedure from the Apple website, I copied my photos library to my new external hard drive and tried to launch photos with the option key held down. I responded to the question to pick my library and it did not work. Further more, now I can not launch photos with my existing local library file! I'm dead in the water. I'm running the newest version of macOS Catalina on my iMac.

iMac Line (2012 and Later)

Posted on Oct 23, 2019 9:28 AM

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Answer 1

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joefly711 Author

Level 1

4 points

Oct 25, 2019 4:47 PM in response to joefly711

After waiting a day+, I tried rebooting for the second time and the problems seems to have disappeared ? I wonder if the OS was processing the multiple TBs of data for a prolonged period of time initially with no obvious indications?

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Answer 2

léonie

Level 10

197,237 points

Oct 23, 2019 10:01 AM in response to joefly711

What is the file system format of the external drive? Is it MacOS Extended (Journaled) or APFS? Is the external drive directly plugged in?

I responded to the question to pick my library and it did not work

What exactly happened? Are you seeing an error message? If yes, what is the error message?

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Answer 3

joefly711 Author

Level 1

4 points

Oct 23, 2019 12:34 PM in response to léonie

My G Drive (new External) is MacOS (Journaled) and it is directly plugged in. I also wonder why I can not switch back to using my internal photos library?

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Answer 4

joefly711 Author

Level 1

4 points

Oct 23, 2019 4:25 PM in response to léonie

I get this error message with either selection (existing or new library).

Photos cannot find the System Photo Library named “Photos Library.photoslibrary”

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