How do I backup my iPhoto Library to an external hard drive and keep my photos grouped by their events?

Which version of iPhoto do you have?

How can I backup my iPhoto Library to an external hard drive and keep my photos grouped by their events?

Copy the complete iPhoto Library from the folder "Pictures" to an external drive. Make sure, the external drive is formatted MacOS Extended (Journaled). If you bought a new drive, it may still be formatted for Windows (See: iPhoto: Issues with FAT32-formatted drives).

With a complete copy of your iPhoto Library you will be able to restore your iPhoto Library as it is with all albums and events just like they are now. Or use Time Machine. If you back up your Mac with Time Machine, your iPhoto Library will also be backed up, if you keep it in the standard folder "Pictures". With Time Machine backups, I would quit iPhoto, before Time Machine runs.

Most Simple Back Up:

Drag the iPhoto Library from your Pictures Folder to another Disk. This will make a copy on that disk.

Slightly more complex: Use an app that will do incremental back ups. This is a very good way to work. 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.

Example of such apps: Chronosync- but there are many others. Search on MacUpdateor the App Store

If you want to back up just the photos then export them from iPhoto to the other disk.

File -> Export

This User Tip

https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-4921

has details of the options in the Export dialogue.

This article will explain how to format a drive with Disk Utility

Format external drives to Mac OS Extended before using with Aperture - Apple Support

Both times I drag and dropped my iPhoto Library from my mac to the external and both times it did copy the photos but without any organization - no way to find a specific photo.

What exactly did you drag and from where?

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

1. Quit iPhoto

2. Drag 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.

Regards

TD

Formatting is formatting, regardless of which app is it for.

exactly as the message said - TimeMachine backups can not be opened - they have to be restore and then opened

And if you change your backup it is no longer a backup - a backup is a redundant copy of the original to be used in cast the original is lost or damaged

LN

I have attempted to make sure my iPhoto library has been backed up on the external hard drive and that it is safe to delete some events from my internal hard drive

You need to think this through.

Time Machine is a back up application. It keeps a rolling back up of the data. It's called rolling because it means you can revert to the data you had on a specific date and time. But that's not eternal, and as time goes by, and your drive fills up, older backups are deleted. So if you delete Events on your Mac they will - eventually - also be deleted from the Time Machine back up.

If you wan tot archive data hendon't use Time Machine for that job. Here's how you might archive an iPhoto Library:

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

To restore your iPhoto Library drom TomeMachine see this link: iPhoto '11: Restoring from Time Machine with iPhoto '11 (9.2 or later) and OS X Lion 10.7.2 (or later)

After you restored it, you can open it in iPhoto '11 by double clicking it or by holding down the options keyhole launching iPhoto in earlier versions.

Yet another set of directions on how to restore an iPhoto Library from Time Machine:

Rather late in the day I'm planning to upgrade my iMac's OS from 10.6.8, and before doing so want to backup my iPhoto Library. I'd be grateful for advice on how to do this. (Some replies in this thread suggest finding my iPhoto Library in the Pictures folder, but I haven't been able to locate such a folder.)

Are you running TimeMachine or other daily backup software? If not you should start before upgrading - upgrading with a good total backup is not smart

Your system is so old that I am not sure I remember everything but the pictures folder I believe is in your users folder - it is the default location the iPhoto library

LN

Thanks, LarryHN, for your very fast and useful response.

With the help of your advice I've found the Pictures Folder, and in it iPhoto Library.

Yes, I'm running Time Machine with hourly backups. (I presume that when you wrote "upgrading with a good total backup is not smart" you meant that upgrading WITHOUT a good total backup was not smart.) However, it's been my anxiety of losing access to old files written in software that won't open in the OS X versions above 7, and the need to find ways round this problem, that's kept me from upgrading till this point. Now that I'm finally getting down to it, in a washover of the same anxiety I'm making doubly sure by backing up some key files or folders to a large UBS drive I have, in addition to the backups on my Time Machine.