Moving photo library on external drive to a new Mac Mini

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Moving photo library on external drive to a new Mac Mini

I have around 0.5Gb of photos on my iMac in my photo library that's held on an external drive and synced to iCloud to hold original resolution photos. I recently got a Mac Mini M2 and would like to use this as my main computer in future as its much faster. Can I simply move the external drive to the Mac Mini and identify this as the library without a lot of re-syncing or uploading - it took almost 4 days to upload my library to iCloud and I don't want to repeat that! The library is of course already synced through iCloud so shows up on my Mac Mini, but I'd like to have the EHD connected to it.

iMac 27″ 5K, macOS 10.15

Posted on Jun 3, 2023 11:50 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Jeff_W.

Community Specialist

Jun 4, 2023 5:37 PM in response to RJS_Community

Hi RJS_Community,

If the external drive is configured with the Photo Library, it would be possible to simply plug that into the new Mac and then hold the Option key while opening Photos to select that existing library. The support article Designate a System Photo Library in Photos shows how.

The syncing that you've configured may continue or require reconfiguration, depending on how that is set up. If you use Time Machine to copy your current settings to the new Mac, that may reduce or eliminate the need to take those steps again.

Cheers!

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Answer 2

Jun 5, 2023 1:42 AM in response to Jeff_W.

Thanks Jeff, that's very reassuring and I appreciate the quick and helpful response. I didn't migrate current settings from my iMac as I have a number of photo editing applications (Affinity / DXO PL6 / Topaz AI) that are quite correctly, limited by license to computer(s). All are now setup on the Mac mini, but I was concerned with migration I'd have a problem with multiple iterations running on machines and diid not want to invalidate the licenses.

I'll give to a go as you suggest as the M2 runs the above apps so much faster and that will then be my main editing machine. I'll then want to move the Time Machine backup (also an external drive) but guess I'll have to set this up as new. All the best - Richard

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Answer 3

Sep 29, 2023 11:45 AM in response to RJS_Community

Hi, I'm curious how did it go? I have a similar situation. I have an old iMac, and my photo library is on an external drive. I just got a new Mac Studio and I plan to just connect the external to it, hold option, on Photos and point to it. I'm just wondering if it went smoothly or were there any hiccups. When it comes to syncing and cloud, I get scared of deletions or having everything duplicated.

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Answer 4

Sep 29, 2023 12:29 PM in response to Kenny Velez

Hi Kenny, it went better than expected - I followed the advice from Jeff_W and aside from leaving it while to sync, no duplication and no deletions. In the end I decided to move the photo library back to my older and slower iMac for the better monitor to offers for photo editing and that reversion again worked without a hitch. Good luck with yours!

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Moving photo library on external drive to a new Mac Mini

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