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How to copy iPhoto Library to an External Hard Drive

How do I copy my iPhoto 9.6 Library from my Pictures Library to a LaCie External hard drive?

It is currently copied to my Time Machine and to cloud storage but I would also like to copy it to an external hard drive for storage in our safe deposit box.

iPhoto '11, Mac OS X (10.6.8)

Posted on Jan 21, 2015 10:03 AM

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4 replies

Jan 21, 2015 10:09 AM in response to ron290

How do I copy my iPhoto 9.6 Library from my Pictures Library to a LaCie External hard drive?

Make sure your external drive is formatted MacOS Extended (Journaled). You can check that with "File > Get Info" for the drive. If the file system is different, copy the contents of the drive somewhere else and reformat the drive. (See: Format external drives to Mac OS Extended before using with Aperture)


Then drag the iPhoto Library from your Pictures folder to the external drive.


It is currently copied to my Time Machine and to cloud storage

What kind of iCloud Storage? If you copied the iPhoto Library to iCloud Drive,you will not be able to restore the library. iCloud Drive will probably corrupt the library by syncing. I tested with several small test libraries, and none could be opened on iCloud Drive, or copied back in a working condition.

The local copies on external drive are much better to save your photos.

Jan 21, 2015 10:10 AM in response to ron290

simple - get an external hard drive formatted Mac OS extended that is directly connected to your Mac with a wired connection (firewire, thunderbolt, USB 2 or 3) and

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


You must not have your iPhoto library on the same volume as your TimeMachine backup - eventually it will quit working since Tm uses all of the available space as it needs it and you have not backup



LN

How to copy iPhoto Library to an External Hard Drive

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