I have over 50,000 photos/videos on my iMac (approximately 2014) and it is running Catalina. I want to copy all my photos/videos to a SanDisk 1T SSD drive. Every time I attempt to cut and paste all photos, it stalls and pinwheels indefinitely. (I've left if for over 24 hours with no success). I am using time machine as well, but I want to have a separate drive with just my photos as a back-up. Any suggestions?
iMac Line (2012 and Later)
Hi.
Is this just for a backup?
First make sure the drive is correctly formatted for photos (APFS, or MacOS extended Journaled) as described here:
https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201517
Then probaby your best solution is to copy the whole photos library to the external drive. (If you are talking about pictures in a photos library)
Alternatively if you prefer to copy just the image files, try using the file/export option rather than copy/paste
Hi.
Is this just for a backup?
First make sure the drive is correctly formatted for photos (APFS, or MacOS extended Journaled) as described here:
https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201517
Then probaby your best solution is to copy the whole photos library to the external drive. (If you are talking about pictures in a photos library)
Alternatively if you prefer to copy just the image files, try using the file/export option rather than copy/paste
Thank you! This is very helpful. I do just want to have all the pictures/videos as image files that could be viewed on a PC as I use both quite regularly. The photos were originally taken either with my iPhone or my Nikon camera. I am not familiar with the file/export option. Could you explain how that works?
Select the images you want to export. Go to the file menu. Select either
Export (edited images exported)
Export unmodified originals (files as they were when imported exported, but without edits)
Then select options.
Copy Photos from iMac to SSD external drive
