How to save photos to phone or i-pad when using external hard drive with Mac

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Level 1

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How to save photos to phone or i-pad when using external hard drive with Mac

Hi, I’m a novice when it comes to technology and have a question for you please.... I have recently bought an external hard drive which I am going to use to back up all my photos on my Mac computer as they are eating into my storage. I do have an I Cloud storage plan but wish to use this less. Once I have transferred my photos to the external hard drive and removed them from the Mac photo library, is it possible for me to create a smaller ‘favourites’ photo folder on both my i-pad and phone in order that I can still see some pictures but still have the bulk of my photos kept on the hard drive? Thanks very much.

iMac 21.5", macOS 10.15

Posted on Feb 23, 2020 1:01 AM

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Answer 1

tygb

Level 9

64,748 points

Feb 23, 2020 7:28 AM in response to Yvon67

Photos can’t be transferred directly from iCloud to an external hard drive for that you need to set up iCloud photo library see the article https://support.apple.com/en-in/HT204264

And its preferences https://support.apple.com/en-in/guide/photos/pht5156cc968/4.0/mac/10.14 , open finder > Go > home > your user name > pictures either drag and drop Photos Library.photoslibrary to an external hard drive , the second method is right click on Photos Library.photoslibrary and click on show package contents in the upcoming column , you can also drag and drop complete masters folder to an external hard drive that is connected .

Also as per the article https://support.apple.com/en-in/guide/photos/pht6d60d10f/mac

Manually copy your library to an external storage device: Drag the Photos library (by default in the Pictures folder on your Mac) to your storage device to create a copy.
See this article also Photos library - Move your Library to an external storage device

Read this : Back up the library in Photos on Mac - Apple Supportsupport.apple.com › en-in › guide › photos › Mac

Restore a library from Time Machine in Photos on Mac - Apple ...support.apple.com › en-in › guide › photos › mac

See some articles to reduce the data https://support.apple.com/en-in/HT204247

https://support.apple.com/en-in/guide/macbook-air/apdb468896e0/2019/mac/10.14.5

https://support.apple.com/en-in/HT206996

https://support.apple.com/en-in/guide/system-information/syspf5a64aa6/mac

Note : the devices iPad / iPhone and Mac are synced with same Apple ID and password on the same network with iCloud.com you delete the photos from any device or iCloud.com the photos will be deleted from all and moved in recently deleted folder and kept for 30 days and deleted from server after 30 days , for your iPhone / iPad you can create an album https://support.apple.com/en-in/guide/iphone/iphc0fc668ab/ios

https://support.apple.com/en-in/guide/ipad/ipad99c6ec9e/ipados

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