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The Apple Support Community will permanently close on November 20, 2026. Starting today, the site will no longer accept new posts and is available in a read-only state.
You can continue to find trusted guidance and support on the official Apple Support site.
We want to thank the community members who have contributed their time and expertise to help others with their Apple products.
I need to move 17 libraries from the internal drive on my M1 MacMini to an external drive. Is it safe to use the normal Mac drag and drop method or is there a better way that is more reliable? I have never had a problem using the D and D method.
[Re-Titled by Moderator]
Original Title: Copy libraries to new drive
Mac mini, macOS 13.7
Yes, you can move your Photos, Music, Movies, Documents and other files to an external drive.
Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support
Change where your music files are stored on Mac - Apple Support
Move your iMovie for Mac library - Apple Support
Just make sure that the Libraries are backed up by Time Machine and/or a second external drive.
Yes, you can move your Photos, Music, Movies, Documents and other files to an external drive.
Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support
Change where your music files are stored on Mac - Apple Support
Move your iMovie for Mac library - Apple Support
Just make sure that the Libraries are backed up by Time Machine and/or a second external drive.
The external should be APFS or HFS+. Yes, you can drag and drop. If the media isn’t internal to the library you’ll have to deal with relinking.
As a small addition to the advice already given: you may want to open these libraries in FCP and delete generated files before copying. You may be surprised at how much space is recovered.
Also test to make sure each library will open and work as intended before deleting the original from the internal drive.
How to safely move libraries to an external drive on Mac mini?
