iPhoto Library not allowing transfer to external drive

you can not have your iPhoto library on the same drive as your TM backup - you obviously see that it would mean no backup of you photos - but more importantly TM will continue to fill the drive until iphoto can no longer run - you need another EHD formatted Mac OS extended (journaled)

LN

How's your external drive with the Time Machine backups formatted? Is the file system "MacOS Extended (Journaled)"?

"error code -36" is an I/O error.

I have seen it at these occasions:

• Hardware problems: When either the source drive or the destination drive are starting to fail. When you are seeing this error, back up your drive asap, to be on the safe side, as long as you can still read it and check the drive with disk utility.
• Wrong file system: When one of the drives is not formatted MacOS Extended (Journaled), there may be files that cannot be written with the original filename. For example files with ethnic characters in the name can cause problems when writing them to a drive, that is not formatted correctly (see: Use locally mounted Mac OS X Extended volumes for your Aperture library,iPhoto: Sharing libraries among multiple users) Check the file system of your external drives. How are they formatted?
• Library corruption and permission problems: Usually setting the "ignore Ownership on this volume" flag for your external drive would help. But you cannot do that on a Time Machine volume.
  Try the iPhoto Library First Aid Tools and repair or rebuild your iPhoto LIbrary.

To repair the iPhoto library with the First Aid tools:

• Try to launch into the First Aid Tools by holding down the key combination option-command ⌥⌘ and clicking the iPhoto icon to launch iPhoto.
• Keep the two buttons firmly held down, until you are seeing the First Aid panel.
• Then select "Repair database".

It is not a good idea to have the iPhoto Library on a Time Machine volume for several reasons:

• Time Machine and iPhoto will fight for space.
• You cannot backup your iPhoto Library.
• You will have problems with permission errors, because you cannot set the ignore ownership flag.

Get a second external drive for your photos, so you can have a backup of the photos.

Good luck. 🙂

Post back, if the "error -36" should persist, even with a new drive. Then you may have a corrupted file in your libraray. But I hope not!

Try rebuilding the library with the free version of iPhoto Library Manager but have the rebuilt library created on the EHD.

Using iPhoto Library Manager to Rebuild Your iPhoto Library

1 - download iPhoto Library Manager and launch.>Click on the Add Library button,

2 - select the library you want to add from those in the selection window.

3 - make sure that in the rebuild window the checkbox "Scavange orphaned photos" is checked.

4 - now that the library is listed in the left hand pane of iPLM, click on your library and go to the Library ➙ Rebuild Library menu option

5 - in the next window name the new library and select the location you want it to be placed. Click on the Create button.

Note 1: This creates a new library based on the LIbraryData.xml file in the library and will recover Events, Albums, keywords, titles and comments. However, books, calendars, cards and slideshows will be lost.

Note 2: Your current library will be left untouched for further attempts at a fix if so desired.

The additional size of the original library could be due to the existence of the iPod Photo Cache folder inside the library which gets populated whenever a mobile device is synced with iPhoto. It can get large. The new library would not have that folder.