How do I change my iPhoto Library location, i.e. to an external drive?

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How do I change my iPhoto Library location, i.e. to an external drive?

I would like to move my iPhoto Library to an external drive to save space on my MacBook Air internal drive. When I have copied the library to an external drive and told iPhoto that that is the default library, nothing is saved there, and the copy of the library on my internal drive is still being used. How do I get iPhoto to use the copy on my external drive as my default library? I would like to purchase a fast 3TB external drive, but do not want to do so if iPhoto will not use it as the default library location.

MacBook Air, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.4)

Posted on Sep 6, 2013 10:29 AM

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Old Toad

Level 10

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Sep 6, 2013 10:44 AM in response to TomWheatonJr

First make sure the EHD is formatted OS X Extended (journaled) with Owership set to be ignored.

Drag the library from your Pictures folder to the EHD. Launch iPhoto with the Option key held down and select the EHD library in the window that appears. The file path to the library selected will be displayed under the window:

If that doesn't set the EHD library as the default delete the iPhoto preference file, com.apple.iPhoto.plist that resides in your Home/Library/Preferences folder. Then launch iPhoto again with the Option key held down and open the EHD library again.

Before deleting the library from your Pictures folder make sure the EHD library is complete and operating as expected.

OT

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