User profile for user: flinthills
flinthills Author
User level: Level 1
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Importing iPhone photos on iMac via external hard drive

Cannot import my iPhone photos to my Photo Library which is on an external hard drive. I have an iMac using OS Sonoma 14.4 and the steps I have done before are as follows: in Finder locate the external hard drive and open it > open Photo Library and on the left side bar locate my phone > click on "open photos" next to phone icon on top left > click on "import new photos" and usually the photos start downloading on the Import page. Everything worked fine in the past until I recently updated to Sonoma. I have been at this for the last 2 days; any suggestions?

iMac (2017 – 2020)

Posted on Apr 6, 2024 11:22 AM

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User profile for user: Richard.Taylor
Richard.Taylor
User level: Level 7
21,334 points

Posted on Apr 6, 2024 2:11 PM

This is still true from the last time you asked, and we still can't help until you answer. Do you need help finding the formatting information for the external drive? One way is to click on the drive icon and do command-i to open the info window:

My Mac drive is formatted as APFS.


The first question we have to ask is, how is your external drive formatted. This is because, to avoid damaging the Photos Library an external drive must be formatted in either APFS format or Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format. Additionally, the drive can not have had Time Machine on it since it was formatted. The newest macOSs won't even allow a Library on a non-Mac formatted drive to open. See this:

Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support


We need to know that answer to that before we can go much further...



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Question marked as Top-ranking reply
User profile for user: Richard.Taylor
Richard.Taylor
User level: Level 7
21,334 points

Apr 6, 2024 2:11 PM in response to flinthills

This is still true from the last time you asked, and we still can't help until you answer. Do you need help finding the formatting information for the external drive? One way is to click on the drive icon and do command-i to open the info window:

My Mac drive is formatted as APFS.


The first question we have to ask is, how is your external drive formatted. This is because, to avoid damaging the Photos Library an external drive must be formatted in either APFS format or Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format. Additionally, the drive can not have had Time Machine on it since it was formatted. The newest macOSs won't even allow a Library on a non-Mac formatted drive to open. See this:

Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support


We need to know that answer to that before we can go much further...



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Importing iPhone photos on iMac via external hard drive

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