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I tried to back up my Pictures to a hard drive. But apple does not allow it. Are there any work arounds besides using iCloud, which itself recommends you back up but does not say how.
MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 10.14
Moving your photos library to an external hard drive is not the same as "If I back up the photos to my external hard drive, ..."
However, if you value the photos (and any other data on your Mac) I would highly recommend that you have a backup of both the data on the Mac and also have a backup of the photo library that you moved (i.e., a backup of the external drive that contains the photo library).
Also, be aware that iPhotos was discontinued and replaced by "Photos" 5 years ago.
After you move your photos library to an external drive as described in Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support you can open the library in the new location by pressing and holding the option key while opening the Photos app. That is described in the same article near the bottom in the section titled "Open another Photos library."
You may want to also insure that the relocated library is designated as the system photo library -- see: Designate a System Photo Library in Photos - Apple Support
Moving your photos library to an external hard drive is not the same as "If I back up the photos to my external hard drive, ..."
However, if you value the photos (and any other data on your Mac) I would highly recommend that you have a backup of both the data on the Mac and also have a backup of the photo library that you moved (i.e., a backup of the external drive that contains the photo library).
Also, be aware that iPhotos was discontinued and replaced by "Photos" 5 years ago.
After you move your photos library to an external drive as described in Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support you can open the library in the new location by pressing and holding the option key while opening the Photos app. That is described in the same article near the bottom in the section titled "Open another Photos library."
You may want to also insure that the relocated library is designated as the system photo library -- see: Designate a System Photo Library in Photos - Apple Support
I'm not sure what you mean when you say Apple does not allow it. Time Machine (Apple's built in backup software) or 3rd party software such as Carbon Copy Cloner will backup your pictures. You can also copy your Photos Library to an external drive.
More information:
Back up your Mac with Time Machine - Apple Support
or
Time Machine does back up both the older iPhotos and the newer Photos, but it sounds like what you wanted to do was mover your photos library rather than do a backup.
The following has instructions on how to move your photos library: Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support
As you noted, you cannot use Time Machine on the same drive that you use for Time Machine. You could partition the external drive and use one partition for Time Machine and the other for your photos library. See instructions in Partition a physical disk in Disk Utility on Mac - Apple Support
or you could turn off Time Machine and delete the backup and then use it only for your photos library.
Hi Edward, welcome to the Apple Users Community.
Apple encourages this, it is the settings on your machine that are making it difficult for you.
First I suggest you let us know the Hard Drive you are speaking of, would this be an internal HD, a USB Flash Drive or perhaps an external SSD?
Are your pictures in the Photos App on your MacBook or are they in your Pictures Folder?
Do you allow Hard Disks and External Disks to show up on your desktop? This is an old school setting that is not commonly used today but it could be useful in this instance.
This would not be a workaround instead of iCloud, this is best practice because you may not always be in a situation where internet access is possible and backups may have to be done even so.
Look forward to hearing back from you.
Thank you for responding. I would like to move 70 GB of photos off of my Mac to make room for documents for work.
I have purchased an external hard drive and backed it up using the Time Machine system, only to discover that this does not back up iPhotos.
I have a few pictures not stored in my iPhoto drive, and could moved them to the External Hard Drive, but not the iPhoto Library.
I have read that if my external hard drive uses Time Machine, I cannot move iPhotos there. I would prefer to ds heelete the Time Machine backup if I can move the iPhotos there.
Does this help?
This is very helpful. If I back up the photos to my external hard drive, I have 2 more questions.
Thanks.
How can I back up photos to a hard drive? Apple makes this impossible. Any suggestions?
