Q: move iphoto library to external hard drive

My main library is in excess of 50k photos right now. It's got a lot of smart albums so start up can take a couple of moments - maybe 90 seconds, other than that, once running it's fine, no spinning wheels, no waiting.

The Finder is doing the copying, not iPhoto. The Finder is horribly unreliable when it estimates copy times.

I would be very, very cautious before running that across my iPhoto Library. It hasn't been updated in a year and iPhoto has, twice. It may help, it may make no difference, and it may make toast of the Library. Put it to you this way, I've seen that advice suggested for the Mail database many times, that's the first time I've ever seen it suggeted for iPhoto, and that's on a site that - whatever the name - doesn't seem the world's busiest.

Let us know how it works out...

LOL, I like your approach, and you've talked me out of the "vacuum".  Any other iPhoto maintenance tips I ought to try?

Thanks.

Well if you've made the back up at least if the vacuum does damage you're covered... but would I do it myself? No.

Speed issues are a bit of a bear to sort out. Some of it is perceptual - how long is "ages to start up" kind of thing - , and then even the bits that can be 'fixed' are very variable. What Mac do you have? How much Ram? How much Free Space on the disk? If you create a smaller library and import a 100 pics to that, does that perform much better? (Apart from starting up - it will be faster) Do you see spinning beach balls as you work?

Okay, I just ran that command over one of my test libraries to see what difference it might make. I can testify that it did no damage... the library opens and seems to work normally. But as there were no issues to fix,  I can't tell if it fixed anything.

What I do to help up iPhoto's speed is to turn off Outline and Dropshadow in iPhoto's Apperance pane, have Event titles displayed in the Photos mode with all Events closed ( at lease for shutting down and subsequent relaunch) and make sure I have adequate free space on my boot drive, a minimum of 10-15GB unless you use iDVDE and then 20-15GB.

I also upped my RAM from the 4 GB it came with to 8GB.  That helped a lot of apps.

Thanks to both of you, Terrence & Toad.  My iPhoto now opens in about 20 seconds, vs 3+ minutes before implementing your suggestions.  Terrence - I tried the "vacuum" thing on my copied iPhoto library (didn't realize I could to that until you mentioned using "test" libraries), it worked fine, then did it on my original iPhoto library.  At the same time I used Toad's suggestions (so I varied a couple things at the same time), net is a significant performance enhancement. 

I use a Macbook Pro  2.4 Ghz Intel Core I7, 4GB Ram, harddrive  750 GB, 454 GB used

Just wanted to share the I too turned off the Look for shared photos option, and my iPhoto doesn't beachball at startup anymore. 

 

-Kevin

Made no difference for me, still getting the bloody annoying beach ball, & I haven't even got anything in the freaking library yet!

Approx. 2 sec after launch, it starts to beach ball, & that goes for approx. 15 secs...

I have a late 09' Mac Mini, but not the official max. of 4GB ram, I have 8GB, + a fast modern day 6G SSD! (which is kinda wasted on the Mini's 3G interface)

Tried rebuilding the library using various doco'd methods, as well as creating an entirely new one, still the same ridiculous problem. Even tried removing plist file from ~/Library/Preferences & launch the app, made no diff, just recreated the plist file & continued with the same issue.

Can't believe I've had to waste so much time on this & I haven't even started to heavily use the app...

If it was massive DB filled with thousand of photos then sure I'd understand, but this is a completely fresh DB!

Can anyone suggest how to resolve this, I don't wish to spend inordinate amts of time in it any more.

Thank-you.

Approx. 2 sec after launch, it starts to beach ball, & that goes for approx. 15 secs...

Is that the only time you see it?

If you disconnect from the internet, does it occur?

What version of iPhoto? Of the OS?

I don't have any photos, zip, so I don't know if it's the only time I see it or not, haven't even started to use the app.

I'll try that later...

iPhoto 09' v8.1.2 (424) 

OS X 10.9.2, all the latest updates applied

(started with a completely fresh install of SL, & then via MAS I upgraded to Mavericks)

Thanks.

If you disconnect from the internet, does it occur?

Interestingly, no it doesn't...

But before I tried that, I tried disabling features that may be causing the app to connect to the net & that didn't help.

Pretty sure I covered them all, but there may be one or more you're aware of that I missed.

I suspect that it's probaly checking for updates  - and as it's no longer in development and is unaware of the App Store it's looking for places that no longer exist - hence the hang. Chances of a fix now? Nil, I woould guess. iPhoto v8 is 5 years old now. The issue doesn't arise with iPhoto 11.

So if I disable that it'll not longer be an issue? (there is a feature like that, Mac's off right now, will check tomorrow, bed time now)

Shouldn't I have gotten a newer version of iPhoto with my mid-2012 rMBP? (bought at the very start of 2013)

That's how I was able to update my Mac Mini to Mavericks, I used the MAS acc't associated with my rMBP.

Good night.

Since you have no photos in the library try the following:

1 - delete the iPhoto preference file, com.apple.iPhoto.plist, that resides in your

     User/Home/Library/ Preferences folder.

2 - delete the contents the following folder:

User/Library/Containers/com.apple.iPhoto

3 - delete the library, launch iPhoto with the Option key held down and create a new library. See if that will help.

NOTE: For Mavericks, 10.9,  go to your Home folder and use the View ➙ Show View Options menu to bring the this window:

where you can check the Show Library Folder checkbox.

Haven't tried (2) yet, but have tried everything else you listed, I'll do all that (in that sequence) tommorrow.

Re "Show Library Folder", didn't bother, just used:

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles 1 (then -ideally- reboot)

I find that Finder feature's still a bit too limiting...

Thanks/Night.

If you bought that machine new in 2013 I would expect iPhoto 11 to be on it. yes.