Downloading directly from icloud to external hard drive

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Downloading directly from icloud to external hard drive

Hi there. I have a very old macbook and a very full icloud account. I haven't backed up any of my photos from the cloud (I've backed up my macbook images but apparently they're not full resolution?) so I have 52,000 photos and videos (198GB) I need to move. I can't download them onto my macbook so is there a way to save them directly onto my 2TB hard drive? Sorry if this a simple question, I'm a technologically simple person. Many thanks.

MacBook Pro 13", macOS 10.13

Posted on May 3, 2020 8:13 AM

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Eric Root

Level 10

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May 3, 2020 7:22 PM in response to kiri2497

One option to free up space would be to move your Photos Library to an external hard drive. Then quit/reopen Photos with the option/alt key held down and make the external hard drive file the system Library. Once you are sure all your photos are there, you can delete the Library from the internal drive if desired. Once you do this, the external hard drive will need to be attached to access/sync your photos.

Article if for iPhoto, but the basics are the same.

Photos library - Move your Library to an external storage device.

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Downloading directly from icloud to external hard drive

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