Can You Use Third-Party Apps to Backup Photo Library

Apple is only recommending Time Machine to backup a Photos Library incrementally. Time Machine can handle the internal links in the Photos Library properly and reconnect them properly, when we restore a library from a backup.

We can also make copies of the Photos Library to an external drive, as long as the external drive is compatible with Photos. It needs to be correctly formatted and must not be a network share or have backup software installed. Using an incorrectly formatted drive or accessing it over the local network can break the internal links. If the external drive is used for backups, Photos may not be able to open the libraries on the external drive because of problems with the file ownership. One big advantage of PowerPhotos is that it has been designed to understand Photos Libraries and the most recent version will also handle iCloud Photos Libraries well. It will give us a warning, if the library is incomplete and originals cannot be downloaded from iCloud.

Back up the library in Photos on Mac – Apple Support (UK)

I have been using Carbon Copy Cloner to make copies of my Photos Libraries. It has been working well, as long as I treated the destination volume strictly as a backup and never opened the libraries on this volume with Photos. Once I opened a backup on the backup drive in Photos the next CCC syncing damaged the library.

I am now using PowerPhotos to merge changes from one drive into the library on the second drive.

With PowerPhotos I can get a kind of archival backup. I want my additional copies of the Photos Libraries on the external drive to be an archive of all photos, also the ones I deleted from my main library, so I can recover older photos, if I accidentally deleted them.

I use Carbon Copy Cloner to incrementally backup my Photos library. It only copies over those new or modified files and removes files that are no longer in the original library.

You can try its demo version and, if it's to your liking, purchase it. CCC can be scheduled to backup hourly, daily, etc. or when it detects a change to the source file. It's very flexible in that regard.

léonie wrote:

I have been using Carbon Copy Cloner to make copies of my Photos Libraries. It has been working well, as long as I treated the destination volume strictly as a backup and never opened the libraries on this volume with Photos. Once I opened a backup on the backup drive in Photos the next CCC syncing damaged the library.

I unsuccessfully tried to reproduce this issue.

I created a new macOS Sonoma 14.5 Photos library in a folder and imported images and movies to it. Then used CCC 7.0.1 to clone that folder to a USB flash drive (a SSD should be used but this was a quick test). Then successfully Option-opened the cloned Photos library. Then imported more images and movies to the main Photos library and used CCC to re-clone that folder to a USB flash drive. Then Option-opened the cloned Photos library with no issues.

One thing I did notice that after a CCC clone the USB flash drive always no longer has "Ignore ownership on this volume" ON which seems to be the default after formatting with Disk Utility and even it is deliberately set ON.

I just ran a test where I had CCC backup a test library with about 150 files in it. After the initial backup I added some photos to the source library and backed up again. I then opened the destination library.

I then reopened the source library and added keywords to several photos. I then backed up again and opened the destination library. It opened as it should, showed the keywords added and worked as it should. Except for…

HOWEVER, I CONFIRMED LÉONIE'S FINDINGS: slideshows projects created by Photos would not play or show anything but the thumbnail tray.

That was the only type of project I tried.

SO if one uses CCC to backup the library the destination library should not be opened between backups.

One thing that surprised me was the speed of the initial backup of the 570 MB (167 photos, 7 videos) for the Desktop to an external SSD drive:

The Finder took about 5 seconds to copy the same library to the same destination.

I have been using Carbon Copy Cloner to make copies of my Photos Libraries. It has been working well, as long as I treated the destination volume strictly as a backup and never opened the libraries on this volume with Photos. Once I opened a backup on the backup drive in Photos the next CCC syncing damaged the library.

Did you ask CCC author why this happens and could it be fixed?

For a while I used CCC to backup Photos library and did not notice this. I don't remember if I ever opened the cloned library (I have all images archived in plain Finder folders elsewhere anyway).

AJH466 wrote:

If PowerPhotos can dig into the container then why not CCC or Chronosync?

PowerPhotos has been designed to handle Photos Libraries. It is using the programming interface of Photos to access the items in a Photos Library, so it can move selected albums and folders between Photos Libraries.

Chronosync and Carbon Copy Cloner are just handling files and folders and links.

I repeated my CCC Photos library test and as Old Toad said: slideshows created by Photos would not play or show anything but the thumbnail tray on the cloned library.

I then tried to use CCC's Advanced Settings > Performance & Analysis: Find and replace corrupted files: Only on the next run ON where CCC will calculate a checksum of every file on the source and every corresponding file on the destination. But this did not fix the slideshow issue.

Otherwise the clone was OK and newly added albums were updated correctly.

I used CCC Standard in this test. CCC has also "Quick Update" that uses "FSEvents" and it seemed to miss some Photos library updates in my earlier test.

I'll ask CCC author about this.

I repeated my CCC Photos library test and as Old Toad said: slideshows created by Photos would not play or show anything but the thumbnail tray on the cloned library.

Update: After rebooting the Mac, the slideshows in the cloned Photos library all play OK. I could repeat this issue and the fix.

Maybe macOS caches some slideshow items? In some related issue CCC author has advised me to "Stop peeking at the destination :-)".

AJH466 wrote: ChronoSync will change the files in the bundle since it only sees those as folders and files. Will that create any problems with the Photos Library?

Makes you wonder what else it's doing, right? Have you tried opening one of these non-packages with Photos? I don't hold out a lot of hope. You would have to change the extension back to ".photoslibrary"

Lots of people use Carbon Copy Cloner. I've had no problems with CCC or with Time Machine. I also make full copies every so often by dragging them to another drive. But I've divided my pictures up among several different (and smaller) Libraries. What didn't work for you?

OT: In your test, the CCC copy doesn't fully function when [A] opened on the backup disk, right? But did you try [B] (without opening on the backup disk) copying that Library back to the internal drive and opening it there? And also, [C] opening it on the backup disk, and then copying that back to the internal drive and checking?

These Library manipulations were also mentioned by léonie, so I'm curious...

Keep in mind that these files are not static. Photos constantly scans them in the background. Changes may be going on that CCC etc are just not aware of. Results people are getting may be different for System Libraries, for Libraries connected to iCloud, or for Libraries kept on a disconnected drive. Hard to tell. One question would be, what is the benefit of using something other than Time Machine compared to the risk of losing your work?

Matti Haveri wrote:

Did you ask CCC author why this happens and could it be fixed?

For a while I used CCC to backup Photos library and did not notice this. I don't remember if I ever opened the cloned library (I have all images archived in plain Finder folders elsewhere anyway).

I send a bug report, but it has been while still running Monterey. I have not tested cloning since then.