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Use iPhoto library from a external hard drive

Hey folks, I've just bought a brand new external harddrive only to help me out freeing my available space which was pretty much all consumed by my photos and videos stored in iPhoto. So my problem is:


All my stuff on iPhoto is stored on the 'Macintosh HD', so this morning I've made a self-backup of all photos&videos to my external HD. Okay, all my stuff are there and here is the fact, whenever I delete them to get my desired free space on 'Macintosh HD', I will, no longer, have access to them by iPhotos.


I've already searched and tried somehow changing [or exporting again (which would be also better for me due to the infos already set, events, for exemple) and changing] the main storage location, but didn't have any success.

Is that possible to do that? Hope I've cleared explained.

Just one more thing, if someone's got any other tip to save storage space, would be extremely appreciated.

Thanks for the attention.

Erick Vitoriano

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X Mavericks (10.9.1)

Posted on Mar 28, 2014 7:43 AM

Reply
3 replies

Mar 28, 2014 8:22 AM in response to brazilerick

I have not idea what youhave actually done


But the correct way to move your iPhoto library to a new external drive is

Moving the iPhoto library is safe and simple - quit iPhoto and drag the iPhoto library intact as a single entity to the external drive - depress the option key and launch iPhoto using the "select library" option to point to the new location on the external drive - fully test it and then trash the old library on the internal drive (test one more time prior to emptying the trash)



And be sure that the External drive is formatted Mac OS extended (journaled) (iPhoto does not work with drives with other formats) and that it is always available prior to launching iPhoto



And backup soon and often - having your iPhoto library on an external drive is not a backup and if you are using Time Machine you need to check and be sure that TM is backing up your external drive



LN

Use iPhoto library from a external hard drive

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