Want to move photos to external hard drive

Question

Level 1

83 points

Want to move photos to external hard drive

Here is my situation.

I have used iPhoto before abd gave more than one iphoto library on my hard drive. I want to move all of my pictures onto an external drive so I have them all in one place. I then want to delete all the photos on my hard drive so I can free up space.

How can I do this? How cam I get all pictures on iMac and another connected external drive to this new external drive which is empty of any files right now. After which I want to delete all the photos on mac PC in order to free up space.

Thanks and I look forward to your reply.

...Bruce

iMac(20" early 2008),MBA, Mac OS X (10.6.4), Proud owner of iPhone 4 and iPad

Posted on Feb 2, 2011 4:19 PM

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Answer 1

LarryHN

Level 10

106,110 points

Feb 2, 2011 4:38 PM in response to BGmail

you can move your library to the external drive - Moving the iPhoto library is safe and simple - quit iPhoto and drag the iPhoto library 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 be sure that the External drive is formatted Mac OS extended (journaled) (iPhoto does not work with drives with other formats) and that it is always available prior to launching iPhoto

And backup soon and often - having your iPhoto library on an external drive is not a backup and if you are using Time Machine you need to check and be sure that TM is backing up your external drive

Once you have done this all photos you import will go to the iPhoto library on the EHD so any photos that are not in an iPhoto library are simply imported to iPhoto

If you have photos in multiple iPhoto libraries then iPhoto Library Manager - http://www.fatcatsoftware.com/iplm/ - is the best and easiest solution for merging libraries and moving photos between libraries

LN

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Answer 2

BGmail Author

Level 1

83 points

Feb 2, 2011 6:55 PM in response to LarryHN

Thanks for the quick reply. Maybe I have not explained myself well enough.

Here's what I want to do. I have not been diligent keeping my photos organized so this is my reason for doing this. Not only do I have a few photo libraries kicking around on my hard drive, but I also have picture files sporadically strewn over my hard rive and another external drive I use.

So my dilemma is to not only merge the photo libraries but also the photos that are not in the iPhoto library and that are simply stored in different directories on the hard drive/external drive.

And lastly I am guessing I may run into some duplicates by doing this consolidating. So how would I then remove the duplicates?

Thanks again and I look forward to your reply.

...Bruce

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Answer 3

Old Toad

Level 10

207,445 points

Feb 2, 2011 7:05 PM in response to BGmail

To remove duplicates from an iPhoto Library use Duplicate Annihilator.

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Answer 4

LarryHN

Level 10

106,110 points

Feb 2, 2011 7:21 PM in response to BGmail

So my dilemma is to not only merge the photo libraries but also the photos that are not in the iPhoto library and that are simply stored in different directories on the hard drive/external drive.

Once you have done this all photos you import will go to the iPhoto library on the EHD so *any photos that are not in an iPhoto library are simply imported to iPhoto*

And lastly I am guessing I may run into some duplicates by doing this consolidating. So how would I then remove the duplicates?

Duplicate annihilator - http://www.brattoo.com/propaganda/

LN

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Answer 5

BGmail Author

Level 1

83 points

Feb 2, 2011 7:36 PM in response to LarryHN

Thanks again for the quick reply.

Lastly, what would you recommend to do to gather all the loose photo files that are stored all over hard drives. Is there a utility to find all these files which I can then move to the EHD?

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Answer 6

BGmail Author

Level 1

83 points

Feb 3, 2011 12:58 PM in response to BGmail

Thanks but wondering if there is an applescript to find and copy photo files to EHD. These would be losse photos that are not in iPhoto library files.

Thanks....

...Bruce

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Answer 7

BGmail Author

Level 1

83 points

Feb 8, 2011 8:03 AM in response to BGmail

I have been able to get all my photos copied onto my EHD. I have loaded into a new iPhoto library and am now using Duplicate Annihilator to remove dups. Will follow up to see if this worked as I have close to 40K pictures.

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Answer 8

Mar 14, 2011 7:00 AM in response to BGmail

hi, i have the same problem - i have tons of folders with photos all over the place (kept making copies in a hurry cos i was scared of accidentally erasing my photos). i tried searching jpeg files and came up with over 10,000 - many of which were stock photos from web pages, attachments from emails etc.

so how did you gather them all?

thanks

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