Difficulty Backing Up 2012 MacBook Pro and inability to move photos out of the old iPhoto app to the newer Photos app

I’m not sure what to expect out of the PowerPhotos app from the description within the App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/power-photo-photo-processing/id588622178.

My basic objective at this point in time is to extract photos and videos from iPhoto on a 2012 MacBook Pro with Mojave to be able to save the photos and videos on an external hard drive. In this process, I would like to eliminate duplicate photos and videos.

I am having significant issues with my external hard drives that I asked you about in another post earlier today (April 17, 2025). 2 of my external hard drives seem to have been damaged, because I am no longer able to get these external hard drive to appear in Finder on either of my laptops. This leaves me with one external hard drive - the WD My Passport from 2017 - that will connect to my 2012 MacBook Pro has a recent Time Machine backup and recent copies of my other files, except the photos in iPhoto.

I would appreciate it very much if you can follow up with any advice on how to handle the external hard drives issues.

It seems like the external hard drive issue is the top concern, because I need to have a storage device that I can use to back up and transfer photos before I can do much else.

Is there a some brand of external hard drive that I can buy new and then format it to be compatible with the 2012 MacBook Pro?

Thank you so very much for your reply! I truly appreciate your time and effort in trying to help me with these problems in attempting to backup my old 2012 MacBook Pro with MacOS Mojave (version 10.14.6) and then being able to transfer all of my files over to my newer 2022 MacBook Pro.

External Hard Drives

I have 4 external hard drives, all of which are various models of WD My Passport for Mac, bought in different years:

A. “My Passport Ultra for Mac:” The packaging says that it is “formatted for Mac” and has 4 TB of storage. My husband purchased this in Oct. 2024, but I have never used this hard drive nor even taken it out of its box, because the compatibility is for MacOS 11+. Thus, I think that this hard drive will probably not be able to function with my 2012 MacBook Pro that runs on MacOS Mojave (version 10.14.6). An issue for me is that I probably can no longer buy a new, blank external hard drive that is compatible with Mojave.

B. “WD My Passport:” I began using this external hard drive in Jan. 2013 when I purchased the 2012 MacBook Pro. The format is “Mac OS  Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled)”. It has 2 TB of storage. The external hard drive still has backups made through Time Machine going back to January 2015. It also has folders of all of my various files that I copied directly from the 2012 MacBook Pro going back to November 2013. I had stopped using this external hard drive because the storage was full, but yesterday I freed up some space by deleting several folders of files that I had copied directly from my 2012 MacBook Pro. I will probably need to delete more old folders of files to be able to finish copying all of my current files over from the 2012 MacBook Pro. Right now, as I write, Time Machine is in the process of attempting to make a backup of 321.64 GB to this external hard drive. I am hoping that with a lot of patience, the Time Machine backup will be successful. 

C. “WD My Passport for Mac” (black-colored): The format is “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)”. It has 4 TB of storage. I began using this external hard drive in September 2017. It has folders of files that I copied directly from the 2012 MacBook Pro from November 2017 through to September 2021, aside from the files that I am copying over now in April 2025. It also has Time Machine backups from March 2022 going back to November 2017. Today, at about 11:30 AM, Time Machine was able to successfully complete the backup that I started yesterday, meaning that it took Time Machine about 18 hours to make the backup.

D. “WD My Passport for Mac” (colored navy blue): The packaging says that it is “Time Machine ready” and “Time Machine compatible” and that it is compatible with MacOS Catalina, Mojave, or High Sierra. It has 4 TB of storage. I am no longer able to access this external hard drive with either my 2012 MacBook Pro or my 2022 MacBook Pro. When I connect the external hard drive to either laptop, the external hard drive lights up, but neither laptop detects that the external hard drive is connected, while the external hard drive simultaneously makes a clicking noise. I took this external hard drive on an airline flight in July 2024 to be able to use my 2022 laptop to access old financial records kept on my 2012 laptop, but I was never able to get the external hard drive to connect to the newer and faster 2022 laptop once I reached my destination. Thus, I think that this external hard drive is damaged and that I have lost access to all of the files and Time Machine backups that it contained. On the 2012 laptop, Time Machine shows that it made backups to this external hard drive between May 2021 and March 2024.

So, to summarize, right now I am working with the WD external hard drives that I bought in 2013 and 2017 to backup the 2012 MacBook Pro. I think that, due to damage, I have lost access to the files and backups on the navy-blue external hard drive that I bought in 2021, because I cannot get either of my 2 laptops to detect that this external hard drive is connected. Then, I have the 4th WD external hard drive that was bought in 2024 but that has never been used, because it does not seem to be compatible with MacOS Mojave on the 2012 laptop.

I think that I probably am not going to be able to buy new, blank external hard drives that are compatible with MacOS Mojave. So, I am not able to implement your idea of having an external hard drive that is only for Time Machine backups and another external hard drive that is only for photo and video storage. What I have got to work with are the 2 external hard drives from 2013 and 2017, which both have a mix of Time Machine backups and copied files.

2. Saving and moving photos out of iPhoto to Photos app:

I would like to be able to extract the photo files in iPhoto Library.photolibrary. At this point in my life, I don’t have any reason to continue using iPhoto or to conserve the organization of the iPhoto library.

Before I bought the 2012 MacBook Pro, I had been a Windows user, and I would upload photos from my digital camera to save on my Windows laptop. In Windows, I would access the photos as files without using a program similar to Apple’s iPhoto or the Photos app as the interface. I had to organize the files myself into folders according to date or subject, instead of having automatic organization. I kept doing this with the photos from my digital cameras through to March 2012. I still have all of these old photos in the 2012 MacBook Pro, and they are still in this same self-designed, manual organization system, which is very easy to access for file sharing and backups.

In Aug. 2014, I bought my first iPhone and began using the iPhone to take photos instead of a digital camera. The iPhone would upload photos to my laptop through the iPhoto app. iPhoto would automatically make groups of photos according to date. It was very easy to edit photos in iPhoto, but it was difficult to get direct access to a photo that I wanted to share or paste into another file. 

At some point, with a MacOS update, Apple introduced the Photos app as the replacement for iPhoto. When this first happened, Apple offered an easy, straightforward mechanism to extract photos from iPhoto to move them into the Photos App, but I did not do this because the organization and editing options in the original version of the Photos app seemed clumsy, less sophisticated, and more limited compared to what iPhoto offered. 

So, for many years, I continued to use iPhoto to upload and backup the photos on my family’s iPhones. With our first iPhones, there was limited storage, such that we would frequently have to backup our photos and videos to iPhoto on the 2012 MacBook Pro and then delete the photos and videos from our iPhones. Thus, iPhotos contains many photos from 2012 through 2021 that I do not have saved on any other devices.

I would also use iTunes on my 2012 MacBook Pro to backup our iPhones from 2014 through to 2021. My 2012 MacBook Pro doesn’t seem to have an issues with iTunes, but I have not yet attempted to copy my iTunes files to my 2 external hard drives.

Beginning with the photos that were shot in January 2018 and thereafter, I have a significant problem in iPhoto of duplicate photos. I think this happened because I was backing up both my iPhone and my husband’s iPhone to iPhotos, where iPhoto would treat a photo that I had sent to my husband from my iPhone and that he had saved on his iPhone as 2 separate photos instead of recognizing that they were duplicates and merging them into one photo saved in iPhoto. Or, maybe the problem of duplicates occurred due to an iPhone update that changed the file names? iPhoto doesn’t seem to have a means to automatically detect and eliminate duplicate photos, and I haven’t had the patience to manually delete so many duplicate photos. iPhoto became very slow and frustrating to use. Our last upload of photos from our iPhones occurred in Oct. 2021. 

Since Oct. 2021, I have been relying exclusively on iCloud to backup to backup my photos from my iPhones. 

Again, iPhoto is essentially my only repository for photos and videos that I took between Mar. 2012 and Oct. 2021. With the iPhones that I had from Aug. 2014 to Oct. 2018, I had a lack of storage, such that I would frequently have to upload my photos and videos to iPhoto on my 2012 MacBook Pro and then delete them from my iPhone to free up storage space. So, there are a lot of photos and videos that I am going to lose if I cannot figure out how to extract them from iPhoto on my 2012 MacBook Pro.

In 2025, I am totally satisfied with the functionality of the Photos app for editing, organizing, finding, and sharing photos according to how the Photos app works on my iPhones. We are using iPhones 12, 13, and 14 in our household.

I am not familiar with how the Photos app works on my 2012 or 2022 MacBook Pro laptops. I am mainly using the 2022 MacBook Pro for financial work and have not taken the time to upload my personal photos to the version of the Photos app that is on my 2022 MacBook Pro.

As I stated in my original post, the Photos app on the 2012 MacBook Pro with MacOS Mojave is not allowing me to import from iPhoto Library.photolibrary. 

When I open iPhoto, the app is acting very slow and is sometimes unresponsive. Today, I am able to use the option get photo files saved in iPhoto to “Reveal in Finder,” such that I might be able to copy the photo files from Finder to folders on my external hard drives. However, when I choose the option to “Reveal in Finder,” I can only see a small portion of my photos that were created over a span of about 2 months. Yet, I need to deal with photos that were created over from Mar. 2012 to Oct. 2021. So, it would be tedious and time consuming to extract nearly 10 years of photos from iPhoto via the method of using “Reveal in Finder” to access the photo files to be copied to the 2 external hard drives.

If I can extract my photos from iPhoto on my 2012 MacBook Pro, my objectives are to 1) save them to my external hard drives and 2) make them upload to the modern version of the Photos app to be viewable on my 2022 MacBook Pro.

If there is an app that is compatible with MacOS Mojave and that is able to extract photos from iPhoto so that they could be saved on an external hard drive, that is all I need. I do not need an app that replicates the organization and interface of iPhoto, because I am satisfied with Apple’s current Photo app for my personal intents and purposes.

I hope that this more detailed information about my set up and difficulties is useful in helping me to find a solution to these issues of backing up and transferring files from an old laptop.

Yes, I figured out how to do what you are recommending.

I was able to right click on iPhoto Library.photolibrary. This brings up the option to “Show Package Contents.” Yes, here, there is a folder called “Masters.”

The “Masters” folder appears to contain sub-folders for each year during the years that I was uploading photos from my digital cameras (2013-2021). Within the the year folders, there appear to be folders for the month, the day, and then the devices from which photos were uploaded.

So, yes, this would work for me to be able to extract my photos out of iPhoto.

Do you know how to extract the photos with the editing changes included?

Another concern is how to deal with duplicate photos and videos?

I think that a lot of space on my 2012 MacBook Pro is being used up by duplicate photos and videos.

Since I was uploading photos from multiple devices to iPhoto, I am concerned that I have to conserve the folder hierarchy within the “Masters” folder, because perhaps some of the devices used the same file name - such as IMG_4250.HEIC - for files that are actually distinct photos (like 2 different people both being called John Doe). I think that if I pull photo files out of the folder system, there will end up being some files with the same name.

And, I think that that I might be getting duplicate files because devices between which the same photo was shared and saved, might create distinct file names for what is ultimately an identical photo.

What do you think is the best way to handle this?

Dear Richard Taylor,

I thank you very much for your reply, but I am not presently able to implement any of the advice that you are offering me.

I explained to you previously that I have 4 external hard drives, all of which are versions of WD My Passport for Mac, but bought in distinct years (2013, 2017, 2021, and 2024).

I have not tried using the 2024 external hard drives because the packaging says that the compatibility is for MacOS 11+, and my 2012 MacBook Pro has MacOS Mojave version 10.14.6.

Do you know if there is a way to make a new external hard drive compatible with an old MacBook Pro?

When I last replied to you, I was able to connect the 2013 and 2017 external hard drives to the 2012 MacBook Pro.

When I tried to connect the 2021 external hard drive to the 2012 MacBook Pro or to the 2022 MacBook Pro, neither laptop could detect the external hard drive - meaning, in other words, that when I have the cable connected between the 2021 external hard drive and either laptop, neither laptop shows the 2021 external hard drive in Finder, even though the 2021

external hard drive lights up.

Is there some way to use the Disk Utility to force either laptop to detect the 2021 external hard drive and show it in Finder? If it is possible to use the Disk Utility to repair an external hard drive that does not appear as connected to the laptop in Finder, that would be wonderful. However, I think that the fact that I cannot see the 2021 external hard drive in Finder means that this external hard drive is damaged and that I have lost access to the files I had saved here.

Presently, the only external hard drive that I can still access with the 2012 MacBook Pro is the 2017 external hard drive. In the past days, with the 2017 external hard drive, I was able to complete a Time Machine backup and make copies of all of my files except the photos and videos in the iPhoto Library.photolibrary.

With the 2013 external hard drive, I was able to copy all of my files except for iPhoto Library.photolibray, but I could not complete a Time Machine backup successfully. When I wanted to disconnect the 2017 external hard drive because the Time Machine backup had completed, I mistakenly disconnected the 2013 external hard drive instead when its Time Machine backup was just beginning. I reconnected the 2013 external hard drive and eventually got Time Machine to restart. The Time Machine backup was going to be huge (+320 GB), because I had not backed up to the 2013 external hard drive since 2018. However, Time Machine stalled at 2 GB of 320 GB backed up. I stopped the Time Machine backup. I then deleted files that I had saved to the 2013 external hard drive to try to create more space, such that I ended up with +629 GB of free space. When I restarted Time Machine, I got a message that there was an error on the 2013 external hard drive and that I should use the Disk Utility. I used the Disk Utility to run First Aid on the 2013 external hard drive. Disk Utility reported that First Aid failed.

The 2013 external hard drive no longer shows up in Finder when I connect it to the 2012 MacBook Pro.

So, I am in a situation where I have just one external hard drive - the 2017 WD My Passport for Mac - that I can still open with the 2012 MacBook Pro.

Considering that 2 of my 4 external hard drives appear to be damaged and will no longer connect to my laptops such that they appear in Finder, having only one external hard drive remaining to backup all of my 2012 MacBook Pro’s files is very worrisome.

Can I buy a new external hard drive in 2025 and make it work with a 2012 MacBook Pro that has MacOS Mojave version 10.14.6? Would I have use the Disk Utility on the 2012 MacBook Pro (not the 2022 MacBook Pro) to accomplish this?

I live in Mexico City. There is an Apple Store that is 1.3 miles from my apartment. Authorized Apple vendors nearby are a MacStore that is 1.1 mile away, and also I shop and MixUp stores. Otherwise, there are such stores as Costco, Office Max, and Office Depot nearby. The Apple website for Mexico appears to only sell thumb drives that do not have enough storage to backup my 2012 MacBook Pro, but there is Amazon.com.mx.

When I used to live in the US, the nearest store that sold products for Apple was Best Buy, which is why my 4 external hard drives have all been WD My Passport for Mac. That is what Best Buy sells.

Do you have any recommendations for purchasing a new external hard drive that I can use with the 2012 MacBook Pro?

The 2012 MacBook Pro has a capacity of 749.95 GB, with 712.35 GB used and 54.84 available (22.26 purgeable).

I think that duplicate photos and video as in iPhoto are taking up a lot of space in the 2012 MacBook Pro.

I had my first baby in 2019, which caused my husband and I to take more photos and videos and share these between devices.

One of the challenges in maintaining my laptops has been that I have 2 small kids - the 6-year-old and also a 2-year-old. I have been shutting the computer in a closet on top of extra rolls of toilet paper and boxes of baby wipes to be able to perform all of these tasks.

This past week has been rough. Both kids came down with fevers and tonsillitis; my husband had his 2nd chemotherapy treatment for lymphoma; and we had to file our prepayment for extension of filing time with the IRS in the US. The desire to not lose all of my TurboTax records plays into this is up there with the desire to not lose my photos and videos.