I am trying to update my photos library on an external hard drive. I'm told my photo library is from a newer version.I tried repairing but no can do. What are specifically my other options? Thanks.
iMac (M1, 2021)
First, about that external Drive, how is your external drive formatted? To avoid damaging the Photos Library an external drive must be formatted in either APFS format or Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format. The drive must be connected directly to the Mac by cable, not networked, clouded, NASed, etc. 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
If this drive is in a an incompatible format, stop running Photos with it immediately! A Photos Library can sit on an incompatible drive, but running it may corrupt the database.
You didn't say what macOS your iMac is using.
A newer Library has stuff in it that an older Photos app just can't understand. So, there are two ways to go.
First, about that external Drive, how is your external drive formatted? To avoid damaging the Photos Library an external drive must be formatted in either APFS format or Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format. The drive must be connected directly to the Mac by cable, not networked, clouded, NASed, etc. 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
If this drive is in a an incompatible format, stop running Photos with it immediately! A Photos Library can sit on an incompatible drive, but running it may corrupt the database.
You didn't say what macOS your iMac is using.
A newer Library has stuff in it that an older Photos app just can't understand. So, there are two ways to go.
You don't want to lose the Photos on that drive, right? Ultimately, I think you're really going to need another bigger hard drive just so you can manipulate the files. Once you get stuck in having no drives that are large enough, that's pretty much the only way out. You can format a new drive as you need it, transfer files from the old drive, and reformat that one. It never hurts to have an extra drive that you can use for backups. Unfortunately, a fast SSD seems to be about $140/TB--about double what I paid for one last June. Wow!
Is it advisable to empty the hard drive in utilities and start over?
Unable to update Photos library on external drive
