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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?

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iPhoto '11, Mac OS X (10.7.4)

Posted on Jul 30, 2012 10:55 AM

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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



TD

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Question marked as Best reply

Jul 30, 2012 11:16 AM in response to marianfromla

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



TD

Oct 3, 2012 3:57 AM in response to Yer_Man

windows NT file system NTFS, (am I stuffed?)


I have a whole bunch of data on there which I have been able to tansfer to the mac, so I thought I would be able to back up to it as well...


A couple other questions


question 1:

Do albums in iphoto work like itunes, in that they are merely menu lists of items which point to the source photos in the library/photos tab?

So if I delete a photo from the album, the original is still in the library/photos tab, at least thats what I think is happening.

ie: to delete a photo I need to delete it from the library/photos tab not the album. (Then from the iphotos trash)


question 2:

Assuming I get the correctly formated external drive, can I transfer/copy just 1 album from within iphoto and leave the rest?

Or do I have to copy the entire iphoto library again from within the finder?


thanks for your support,

Oct 3, 2012 4:57 AM in response to snappler

windows NT file system NTFS, (am I stuffed?)


Consider yourself stuffed.


a: Macs can't write to that natively, you will need extra software to allow that. - tho' they can read from that.

b: It's not a suitable environment for an iPhoto Library which needs to be sitting ona disk formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled)


Do albums in iphoto work like itunes, in that they are merely menu lists of items which point to the source photos in the library/photos tab?


Yes. But remember there are two views of the Library: Library/Events and Library/Photos. Two views of the same material and an event is not an album. Deleting from an Event is deleting from the Library.


So if I delete a photo from the album, the original is still in the library/photos tab, at least thats what I think is happening.


Correct.


ie: to delete a photo I need to delete it from the library/photos tab not the album. (Then from the iphotos trash)


Correct.


Assuming I get the correctly formated external drive, can I transfer/copy just 1 album from within iphoto and leave the rest?


Sorry but the question is a bit ambiguous. You can export the contents of an Album to an external drive. You can have the Library on an external drive. You can move albums from one Library to another with a 3rd party app called iPhoto Library Manager


Or do you mean backing up?


Use an app that will do incremental back ups.The first time you run the back up the app will make a complete copy of the Library. Thereafter it will update the back up with the changes you have made. That makes subsequent back ups much faster. Many of these apps also have scheduling capabilities: So set it up and it will do the back up automatically. Examples of such apps: Chronosync or DejaVu . But are many others. Search on MacUpdate

Oct 3, 2012 5:32 AM in response to Yer_Man

thanks for clearing it up.


regards the last question, the apps look useful, however I wanted to try working without additional apps at the moment, just native mac tools, I would like to move the photos that are in an album to the external drive, and have them also be deleted from the main photos library, this is probably a multi step task, how would I do this?


I was hoping to right click cut/paste an album into an external drive,or use file/transfer or something to that effect, is there a simple way to do this?


kind regards,

Oct 4, 2012 5:08 AM in response to Yer_Man

I`ll write it another way


I want to select the photos I have in 1 album, and move them to an external drive, in the most efficient quickest way possible.


I thought I could just select the album, copy paste into an external drive. (via iphoto) but this is not the case..


when I move those photos to the external drive, I don`t want them in iphoto anymore, or any picture library.


Whats the best way to back these up?


I`m talking about selective back up, I want to back up to an external drive, only the album I select, (or event I select).


Lets say you want to move the photos in an album to an external drive, and delete from your computer some photos in that album, your giving those photos to a friend, but then removed from my mac, (they have pc), then how would I do this without having to copy the whole iphoto library to the external drive?

Oct 4, 2012 7:33 AM in response to Yer_Man

Thanks for explaining,


one more thing, when I select some photos in a current album, and choose file/newalbum, it puts a copy of those selected photos into the new album, thats fine but I dont want them in the previous album, is there a method to have them cut and pasted into the new album at the time the album is created, or do I have to then go back to the previous album to delete them from there?


If I drag the photo from a previous album into the new album it also makes a copy, I want to move the photo out of a current album and into another new album album,

Nov 17, 2012 8:09 AM in response to Yer_Man

Terence,


When you reference that the external drive needs to be formatted Mac OS Extended, can you tell me what this means? I am in the process of doing a backup with on "My Book Essential formatted for Mac." Should this be sufficient? What do I lose if it's not "extended?"


Also, I'm trying to absorb all that I've read here. Do I need to do two separate backups if I want a copy that can be opened in Mac and also a copy that can be opened on any other computer, e.g. PC? I think I do but just making sure.


Thank you!

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?

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