Copying iphoto library to a new mac

Hi Ramahan,

i just bought a new macbook pro too and i am trying to copy my photos from my old iphoto '06 on my previous macbook to an external disk. i tried copying the library as an entity like the other posts said but every time it does, it reduces the size of the pictures it is copying and i end up with a bad resolution. how did you manage moving your photos to a hard disk without reducing their size?

thanks

Welcome to Apple Discussions,

The drive you are keeping your iPhoto Library on, what format is it?

Also, what format is the internal hard drive of the computer you are copying the library on to?

Try making a brand new folder on the desktop of the computer (File > New Folder). Give the folder a name that is all lower case with no spaces like "drivedata".

Drag the iPhoto Library into that new folder. Assuming the files copy into that folder you can then move them wherever you would like on the computer (~/Pictures and ~/Music would be my suggestion).

Hope that helps.

Hello Noora,

Copy the entire iPhoto Library (Usually located on the original computer in Your User > Pictures > iPhoto Library) to the external drive.

Once the iPhoto Library folder is there, take the drive to the new computer and copy that same library into the default location Your User > Pictures > iPhoto Library.

Once in this location, launch the iPhoto while holding down on the option key on your keyboard. You should see a window that says "What photo library do you want iPhoto to use?". In the list at the bottom of the window, choose the freshly copied iPhoto Library and then say "Choose".

Hope that helps.

Both drives are formatted for mac files.

Is one drives Mac OS Extended Journaled Case Sensitive?

Lets see if we can trick the drive into letting us copy the library over.
_Go to Go > Utilities > Disk Utility
_Once in Disk Utility go to File > New Disk Image from Folder
_Locate and click once on the iPhoto Library on your external drive and then click the "Image" button
_Save the disk image to the desktop and set "Image Format" to "read only" and "Encryption" to "none"

Assuming the disk image is created successfully you can then double-click on the image on the desktop and it will mount and open to reveal your library. The library can then be dragged in the ~/Pictures/ directory.

Note that you will have 2 copies of your library on the computer at this point. 1 inside the image, and one that you dragged to ~/Pictures/. Once the copy is complete and iPhoto is working you can get rid of the disk image.

If you encounter the same issue with the Disk Image creation that you did just copying the iPhoto Library over, it might be a good idea to reformat this external drive and put a fresh copy of the iPhoto Library on it from the original source.

Hello,

thanks for your help.

those are actually the steps i followed to copy the photos to the hard disk however it still resulted in copying photos in a much smaller size than they originally are; for example a photo that is 1 MB in my original iphoto library is copied as a 40 kb size photo to the hard disk.

any thought?

thanks again

for example a photo that is 1 MB in my original iphoto library is copied as a 40 kb size photo to the hard disk.

Then you're not copying the Library, only the thumbnails.

Or, are you by any chance, importing one Library to another?

Regards

TD

When moving your library from one computer to another, make sure you are grabbing the iPhoto Library itself.


Copy this library to your external.

Then copy this library to your new computer.

Double-click the library on the new computer to open it with iPhoto.

I am having the exact same problem trying to copy my iPhoto library from an external HD to my new MacBook Pro - same error message. The steps detailed below don't work to correct this. My iPhoto library is 80GB, and it gets the error message each time after about 43GB is copied.

External HD is Ext Journaled case sensitive.

My idea is this - copy iPhoto library to a non-case sensitive external HD, and then try copying it to the Macbook Pro internal HD. I'll see if that works.

No, that didn't work either. Neither did the disk image trick above. Have tried it on two different macs and continue to get the same error message. Any other ideas on how to copy my iPhoto library to another drive? Continue to get this message at the same point in copying - about 43GB into copying an 80GB iPhoto library -> You can’t copy “iPhoto Library” because it has the same name as another item on the destination volume, and that volume doesn’t distinguish between upper- and lowercase letters in filenames

Any help would be appreciated.