Transfer Photos to external drive

I do not use iCloud. I copy my photos and videos to a Photos library on an external drive. Suddenly, the Photos library on the external drive won't import photos or allow me to drag and drop. I get an error message that says the library cannot recognize the file formats or they may be corrupted. I have tried repairing the library, but that has not worked. Is Apple trying to force me to use iCloud? Has anyone else experienced this? Is there a solution?

MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 10.15

Posted on May 24, 2024 4:15 PM

Top-ranking reply

Richard.Taylor

Level 7

21,138 points

Posted on May 25, 2024 6:46 AM

You don't mention how your external drive is formatted. We see lots of problems here dealing with formatting. 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. There have been so many problems with using incompatible drives that the newest macOSs won't even allow a Library on a non-Mac formatted drive to open, since there is a chance of damaging the Photos database. See this:

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

So, before investigating further, let us know the format of your hard drive.

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Transfer Photos to external drive

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