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Photos library import to new MacBook Air

I have a brand new MacBook Air 2020.


My library from my old iMac is stored on an external drive. I have tried to set this up as the system library by connecting it to my Air and then pressing Option and photos and then selecting the external drive library.


It started to import and then stopped at 5% and didn't do anything further. I have since tried again and it says 'photos was unable to open the library “Photos Library_4”. (5416)


Am I doing something wrong and is there a way I should be doing this?

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 10.15

Posted on Jun 16, 2020 1:59 PM

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Question marked as Best reply

Posted on Jun 17, 2020 6:15 AM

Do you have a backup copy of the library, made before you tried to open the library on the Mac with the newer version of Photos? It is not possible to share a library between two Macs with a different version of Photos. As soon as the newer Photos version opens the library, it will be converted to a format, that the older Mac cannot read.


Try to get the new MacBook Air to fix the library. Opening and preparing a large library with 400GB of photos and videos can take several hours.

  • Make sure the external volume has the "Ignore ownership on this volume" flag set. This is described here: Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support. This flag will help to avoid permission and ownership problems, when working from different user accounts on different Macs.
  • Make sure, the library is on volume, that has not been used for Time machine backups, or you cannot work with the library on Catalina Macs.

Once the volume has been prepared, try again to open the library in Photos. Let it run, even if it takes hours.


One problem may be incompatible media files in the library. Photos on Catalina cannot work with all media formats that may have been imported to the library on older system versions. It would have been better to remove files that can no longer be used on Catalina from the library before opening it in Photos 5.

This list (for iMovie) can give you an idea what to look for:

About incompatible media in iMovie for macOS - Apple Support


6 replies
Question marked as Best reply

Jun 17, 2020 6:15 AM in response to martynfromsomewhere

Do you have a backup copy of the library, made before you tried to open the library on the Mac with the newer version of Photos? It is not possible to share a library between two Macs with a different version of Photos. As soon as the newer Photos version opens the library, it will be converted to a format, that the older Mac cannot read.


Try to get the new MacBook Air to fix the library. Opening and preparing a large library with 400GB of photos and videos can take several hours.

  • Make sure the external volume has the "Ignore ownership on this volume" flag set. This is described here: Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support. This flag will help to avoid permission and ownership problems, when working from different user accounts on different Macs.
  • Make sure, the library is on volume, that has not been used for Time machine backups, or you cannot work with the library on Catalina Macs.

Once the volume has been prepared, try again to open the library in Photos. Let it run, even if it takes hours.


One problem may be incompatible media files in the library. Photos on Catalina cannot work with all media formats that may have been imported to the library on older system versions. It would have been better to remove files that can no longer be used on Catalina from the library before opening it in Photos 5.

This list (for iMovie) can give you an idea what to look for:

About incompatible media in iMovie for macOS - Apple Support


Jun 17, 2020 1:33 AM in response to Old Toad

Hi Old toad,


You have helped me before on an other problem I had :)


My iMac is El Capitan 10.11.6 which stopped updating a while ago.


Photos is version 1.5 (370.42.0)


My external drive is Mac OS Extended (journaled)| formatted


I did just plug my external drive back in to my old iMac but now it says it cannot read the library due to it being from a newer version of photos.


Please help, I'm slightly panicked that I have lost nearly 400gb of photos.


Thanks


Martyn

Photos library import to new MacBook Air

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