freyjens

Q: How to move photos to external hard drive?

How do I move photos from library to external hard drive to free up space?

macbook, Mac OS X (10.5.8)

Posted on Nov 11, 2010 8:06 PM

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Q: How to move photos to external hard drive?

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  • by LarryHN,

    LarryHN LarryHN Dec 5, 2012 11:06 AM in response to mrmellow77
    Level 10 (84,170 points)
    Photos for Mac
    Dec 5, 2012 11:06 AM in response to mrmellow77

    No - you simply have to be sure that the volume that the iPhoto library is on is being backedupi by Time Machine

     

     

    Hence my comment

     

    if you are using Time Machine you need to check and be sure that TM is backing up your external drive


    LN

  • by emilyfromlurgan,

    emilyfromlurgan emilyfromlurgan Apr 29, 2013 1:50 AM in response to LarryHN
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Apr 29, 2013 1:50 AM in response to LarryHN

    I don't understand this time machine thing. My is full and says is is dropping off files so does that mean I have lost them

  • by Old Toad,

    Old Toad Old Toad Apr 29, 2013 9:59 AM in response to ilikestuff
    Level 10 (140,898 points)
    Photos for Mac
    Apr 29, 2013 9:59 AM in response to ilikestuff

    I use Time Machine to backup the drive where my libraries are held and it works fine.  Just be sure to occasionally restore a copy (keep both) and open it to verify that it works as expected.  You can then delete the restored version and continue with the working library.  I'd do that no matter what you use to backup your library.

     

    OT

  • by Old Toad,

    Old Toad Old Toad Apr 29, 2013 10:05 AM in response to GOTR
    Level 10 (140,898 points)
    Photos for Mac
    Apr 29, 2013 10:05 AM in response to GOTR

    Are you running a "managed' or "referenced" iPhoto Library?

    iP11advprefs.png

     

    If it's a "managed" then all you need to do is follow Terence's direction in copying the library to the EHD and opening it to verify it works as expected and has all of your photos before deleting the librrary from your Pictures folder on your boot drive.

  • by JRdance,

    JRdance JRdance Sep 10, 2013 10:40 PM in response to freyjens
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Sep 10, 2013 10:40 PM in response to freyjens

    Absolutely brilliant!! Thank you so much!! This has helped me immensly and I have now got some memory back on my internal hard drive!!  Your step - by - step intructions made this very easy to complete.  Terence you are legend!! Thank you again!!

  • by KMadvisor,

    KMadvisor KMadvisor May 14, 2015 9:11 AM in response to freyjens
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 14, 2015 9:11 AM in response to freyjens

    The "it's simple" response will not work for everyone. Sadly, I find that dragging the iPhoto Library Master Set (either the library that is migrated to photos or the one shown under photos) brings up an error code -36 saying that the operation cannot be completed becuase the file cannot be writen or read.  Research into this problem brings up a dot_clean excercise using terminal, but that has not helped.

     

    I am stuck with about 55,000 photographs clogging my MacbookPro (mid 2010 17" that won't be replaced until Apple brings back 17"ers).

     

    Any help/advice most appreciated. Performance is degrading on the notebook as the disk fills up.

     

    JJ

  • by LarryHN,

    LarryHN LarryHN May 14, 2015 10:41 AM in response to KMadvisor
    Level 10 (84,170 points)
    Photos for Mac
    May 14, 2015 10:41 AM in response to KMadvisor

    first off - this is not correct and not what was posted

     

    I find that dragging the iPhoto Library Master Set (either the library that is migrated to photos or the one shown under photos)

     

    No experienced posted ever suggested this - you do NOT move a piece of either the iPhoto library or the Photos Library - you move the entire library intact as a single entity as posted

     

    you move the entire library - Moving the iPhoto library is safe and simple - quit iPhoto and drag it intact as a single entity to the external drive - depress the option key and launch iPhoto using the "select library" option to point to the new location on the external drive - fully test it and then trash the old library on the internal drive (test one more time prior to emptying the trash)

    And first verify that the external drive is correctly formatted - It must be formatted Mac OS extended (journaled) - if it is a different format it will not work and that could be the cause of the error -36

     

    LN

  • by Old Toad,

    Old Toad Old Toad May 14, 2015 10:56 AM in response to KMadvisor
    Level 10 (140,898 points)
    Photos for Mac
    May 14, 2015 10:56 AM in response to KMadvisor

    Give this a try:  Boot into the Recovery volume (boot with the Command + R keys held down), select Disk Utility and repair both the disk permissions and the disk.  Reboot normally and try a drop and drag again.

     

    If that fails you can try to  use a backup application to backup just the library package from your Pictures folder to the EHD. That has worked for others who were getting the I/O error  -36.

     

    And make sure the EHD is formatted OS X Extended (journaled).

  • by moonbaza,

    moonbaza moonbaza Oct 7, 2015 4:46 AM in response to Terence Devlin
    Level 1 (2 points)
    Oct 7, 2015 4:46 AM in response to Terence Devlin

    Terrence,

     

    I have completed the process you outlined.  When I went to open Photos for the first time, I pushed the 'Alt' key as recommended. It did not appear to work, however because I did a photo sync from my iPhone after that, and the new photos only went to the 'Photos Library' folder that is on my computer's drive, not the external drive.

     

    So now I have a folder on my external drive labeled 'Photos Library', that does not have the new photos, and folder on my internal drive labeled 'Photos Library' that has the new photos.

     

    Do you have an idea of what I might have done wrong? I'm wondering if the process you outlined above does not work in Yosemite?

     

    Another question I have is; When I look at the 'Pictures' file on my internal drive, there is a folder that says, 'IPhoto', (which is obviously what it used to be called before 'Yosemite'.  When I click on it, it shows the folder size is 133 GB, but when I click on it, I get a message saying, 'Your photo library ha been migrated with 'Photos'.  I'm wondering if I can delete this folder since everything is now in 'Photos', or if I have to keep it?  I guess I just don't want two folders with 133 GB of photos on an already nearly full hard drive.

     

    Thanks for any help you can offer.

     

    Ehren

  • by Terence Devlin,

    Terence Devlin Terence Devlin Oct 7, 2015 7:16 AM in response to moonbaza
    Level 10 (139,475 points)
    iLife
    Oct 7, 2015 7:16 AM in response to moonbaza

    I pushed the 'Alt' key as recommended. It did not appear to work, however because I did a photo sync from my iPhone after that, and the new photos only went to the 'Photos Library' folder that is on my computer's drive, not the external drive.

     

    Did you select the drive on the external?

     

    You don't have two libraries that take up 133 gigs of space. They both claim to do so, but in effect, it's the same 133 gigs. So if you don't want to use iPhoto anymore, then yes you can delete it. Just you won't get back as much space as you hope.

     

    Beware of overfull drives:

     

    OS X needs about 10 gigs of hard drive space for normal OS operations - things like virtual memory, temporary files and so on.

     

    Without this space your Mac will slow down as the OS hunts for space on the disk, files will be fragmented, also slowing things down, apps will crash and the risk of data corruption - that is damage to your files, photos, music - increases exponentially.

  • by Saturn5Dad,

    Saturn5Dad Saturn5Dad Dec 4, 2015 5:41 AM in response to LarryHN
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 4, 2015 5:41 AM in response to LarryHN

    Hi Larry,

     

    Thanks for your post, very helpful. My thought was to move part of my Photos library to an external drive, say all photos before 2010, to improve performance of the Photos app on my MacBook Pro (app very slow opening up now and you don't want to KNOW how long it's taking to upload to iCloud). I understand how to move the entire library to the external (thanks), but what if I only want to move part of the library? If that's not possible/clean, I'm guessing I should copy the ENTIRE library onto the external, then delete the old photos from the library on the laptop to free up space. Yes?

     

    Thanks again!

     

    Jeff

  • by ashleyfromport,

    ashleyfromport ashleyfromport Aug 11, 2016 6:58 PM in response to Terence Devlin
    Level 1 (8 points)
    Aug 11, 2016 6:58 PM in response to Terence Devlin

    I'm looking at your answer and it all makes so much sense, i have tons of photos to transfer and I'm in the middle of transferring the iPhoto as a whole to me segate drive... HOWEVER i already have a bunch of stuff i do not want to get rid of on that drive and just realize that it is not formatted correctly. if i transfer my iPhoto library and am able to open it from my computer still and wipe out my current iPhoto will this cause problems? AT THIS TIME I'm not hoping to have my current (which hopefully will be empty iPhoto) go directly onto the segate as i understand i clearly missed the formatting message before hand, i will buy a new one and do that for the future photos. so mainly my question. if i upload the 160g of photos to my segate which is formatted incorrectly at this time and i can not change that. What will happen to these photos once deleted off of my desktop? (i should still be able to select them single handily off my segate drive and open them up in photoshop?)

    And also...  if thats a yes. and i end up filling up iPhoto again )before i have a chance to get a new empty formatted back up where i can just follow your instructions to have my photos import directly to iPhoto in the seagate. ) AND i drag and drop the whole new iPhoto into my not properly formatted segate will it replace the files or will it just  make an ''iPhoto2' hope that makes sense

  • by Terence Devlin,

    Terence Devlin Terence Devlin Aug 11, 2016 11:42 PM in response to ashleyfromport
    Level 10 (139,475 points)
    iLife
    Aug 11, 2016 11:42 PM in response to ashleyfromport

    Well of course you can change the format of your Seagate drive. Just back up its contents first. Reformat it, restore the contents.

     

    iPhoto needs to have the Library sitting on disk formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Users with the Library sitting on disks otherwise formatted regularly report issues including, but not limited to, importing, exporting, saving edits and sharing the photos.

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