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Level 1

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iphoto: How to safely delete or move photos. I have over 7000 photos. When I deleted some, I found that the event still shows up with a blank frame. Can I move some photos to an external hard drive but leave the pointer in iphoto?

iphoto: How to safely delete or move photos. I have over 7000 photos. I would really like to move tsome of the older photos to an external hard drive. (They are backed up in Time Machine, but I like the immediacy of having them available.) So question 1 - is it possible to split the iphoto library so that the directory tree points to an external drive in some cases? And if that doesn't work--I am willing to export and delete some of these photos. However, an earlier delete left me with events that have a name in the event folder, but no photos. Question 2 -- How do I properly delete photos so that all references disappear?

example:

iPhoto '11, Mac OS X (10.7.4)

Posted on Jul 30, 2012 10:55 AM

Best reply

Yer_Man

Level 10

162,396 points

Posted on Jul 30, 2012 11:16 AM

Warning: Time Machine is not an Archiving application. It keeps rolling back ups. That means if you delete something from the source Mac it will eventually be also deleted from Time Machine. How long that takes depends on the amount of disk space TM has. So, remember, backing up in Time Machine is not the same as Archiving.

For the blank thumbnails: This can happen if you try delete too many photos at one go. Experienced users suggest you should delete in batches of 100 or so.

Yes you can split the Library, where some of the Masters are stored locally and some on an external disk, but really, you don't want to do that. iPhoto's file management tools are limited at best, and if the path to the files changes then you could find yourself repairing the links to the files - all of them, one by one.

Better: Have your entire Library on an External Drive.

Make sure the drive is formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled)

1. Quit iPhoto

2. Copy the iPhoto Library from your Pictures Folder to the External Disk.

3. Hold down the option (or alt) key while launching iPhoto. From the resulting menu select 'Choose Library' and navigate to the new location. From that point on this will be the default location of your library.

4. Test the library and when you're sure all is well, trash the one on your internal HD to free up space.

If you want to have a smaller library on your internal disk:

Here's one way to do what you want:

Make sure the drive is formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled)

1. Quit iPhoto

2. Copy the iPhoto Library from your Pictures Folder to the External Disk.

Now you have two full versions of the Library.

3. On the Internal library, trash the Events you don't want there

Now you have a full copy of the Library on the External and a smaller subset on the Internal

Some Notes:

As a general rule: when deleting photos do them in batches of about 100 at a time. iPhoto can baulk at trashing large numbers at one go.

You can choose which Library to open: Hold down the option (or alt) key key and launch iPhoto. From the resulting menu select 'Choose Library'

You can keep the Library on the external updated with new imports using iPhoto Library Manager

Regards

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19 replies

Nov 17, 2012 8:20 AM in response to cherscribe

Okay, I apologize. I feel stupid. I just looked up "get info" on my external drive and it does say it is formatted as mac os extended (journaled)! So nvm to that question. However, I would still like to clarify whether or not photos backed up as an iPhoto library can be opened on a PC or whether they would need to be exported and backed up separately for potential PC access?

Yer_Man

Level 10

162,396 points

Nov 17, 2012 8:22 AM in response to cherscribe

1. Mny manufacturers put that " formatted for Mac" label on disks that are formatted FAT as Macs can write to them too. But these are not appropriate for an iPhoto Library. It needs to be Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and you can do this with Disk Utility in your Applications/Utilities folder.

2. iPhoto has no cross platform ability whatever. If you want to have the shots available for a PC you'll need to export from iPhoto to the Finder.

Regards

LarryHN

Level 10

106,110 points

Nov 17, 2012 8:26 AM in response to cherscribe

As far as I know there is no program fir the PC that understands the iPhoto library structure and generally a PC can not access a Mac OS extended formatted drive. So to use iPhoto photos on a PC select the photo(s) in iPhoto, export them to a desktop folder and move that folder to the PC

Nov 17, 2012 9:28 AM in response to LarryHN

Larry and Terence,

Thank you both. That is what I thought and just needed to confirm.

Thanks so much for your replies.

iphoto: How to safely delete or move photos. I have over 7000 photos. When I deleted some, I found that the event still shows up with a blank frame. Can I move some photos to an external hard drive but leave the pointer in iphoto?