move iphoto library to external hard drive

Open Disk Utility, select the My Book and click on the Format button. From there you select OS X Extended (journaled) an go from there.

Thanks for the answer.

once this has been done, how can I make sure I back the content of the external HDD on my time capsule?

I want to make sure I have it also there as I do not want to risk losing everything in case the HDD fails.

Thanks

in teh Time Machine preferences verify that the EHD is being backed up

LN

This has been very helpful.

Anyone have any insights as to speed? Are all external drives created equal? I imagine not.

I can do the research, but if you've found a helpful thread on the subject, I'd love a link.

THanks!

I have found no discernable difference in performance with any USB 2 or Firewire drives.

Regards

TD

FWIW I use Other World Computing FW drives: OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro FireWire 800/400, eSATA + USB2 external Solutions up to 2.0TB - Plug & Play Quad Interface.

I've had very good results with them.

Hi, I have read your thread and had previously used an EHD to operate my iphoto library - all went well until the EHD crashed. Now I am a bit hesitant to do it again as there dont seem to be a way to back up the iphoto library FROM the external hard drive? Does anyone know how to do that?

there dont seem to be a way to back up the iphoto library FROM the external hard drive?

Yes, you can backup an iPhoto Library that's on a EHD. All you need is a second EHD to save the backups to. Hard drives do crash on occasion so that's why you want to have more than one location where you save your backups to whether those two locations are the boot drive and an EHD or two EHDs.

Hi, thanks! I thought so too, seemed an easy thing but I ve taken everything to an apple store and they told me it ALWAYS has to go via the laptop or computer. Problem is if 1 EHD is baking up the computer I need another one to transfer the library to and a third one to back up the second one right? But it only seems possible to tell my EHD to back up a computer not another EHD....sorry I am not the most experienced apple user ever...

That's not so. Time Machine will backup not only your boot drive but any EHD connected to it. In fact it's up to the user to specify if they don't want a specific EHD to be backed up by TM:

Therefore put your library on EHD1 and run it form there. Then have Time Machine on EHD2 make backups of both your laptop and EHD1.

I have a similar problem - moved the iPhoto library from the drive of my iMac to an external one, formatted as needed in MacOS extended. But the iPhoto sees only some of the photos, it has the original folder structure but without most of the photos in the folders. The original photos are all inside the library (checked the folders). I tried all available options given by iPhoto with the cmd+opt start but still no solution. Any ideas?

Sounds like you need to redo that copy, no?

If that's not possible:

Download iPhoto Library Manager and use its rebuild function. This will create a new library based on data in the albumdata.xml file. Not everything will be brought over - no slideshows, books or calendars, for instance - but it should get all your albums and keywords back.

Because this process creates an entirely new library and leaves your old one untouched, it is non-destructive, and if you're not happy with the results you can simply return to your old one.

I am trying to move my iPhoto library to an EHD. I have about 30K photos and 100 videos in the iPhoto library. When iPhoto is running my Mac really slows down. I was able to move all the videos I had in my iMovie library to a hard drive and access them with no problem. I would like to do the same with the iPhot library. I copied the iPhoto Library to the drive. When I launch iPhoto, holding down the "option" key I get a menu that only shows the iPhoto Library on my internal drive. I tried choosing the "Other Library" option, but when I try to select the iPhoto Library on the EHD there is no response. I am using iPhoto '11 and a the EHD is formatted Mac OS extended (journaled) and is connected using a USB cable.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks

As iPhoto is not seeing a valid library there I would guess the copy over didn’t work. Try again.

I am not sure what I might be doing wrong. I have tried again, I have selected the iPhoto Library folder from directory, selected "copy "iPhoto Library"", I then went to the My Book EHD and pasted the iPhoto Library. It shows up when I go to that drive, but it still does not show up when I open iPhoto holding down the option key. I check the info on both files and they are the same.