perallin

Q: Opening Photos first time from iPhoto on external drive - Please help!!

I have a MacBook Air with 256GB SSD hard drive and due to the limited space, I have for years had my iPhoto library on an external disk, connected to my Airport Extreme.

 

After upgrading to OSX 10.3.3 I click on the new Photos "app" on the MacBook Air by holding down the "alt option" key, in order to chose my iPhoto library, located on the external hard drive.

After several hours of a very slow moving status bar in Photos, I got the error message, that Photos needed at least 225GB of storage, in order to work.... I thought that Photos would just use the existing iPhoto library and convert it to a Photos library, but to me it seems like it is duplicating the iPhoto library to a new Photos library...?

 

Please, if anyone has stumbled upon this challenge them selves, any help would be much appreciated!

 

MacBook Air (mid 2011), i7 1.8GHz, 4GB Memory, 256GB SSD Disk, OS X 10.3.3

iPhoto 9.6.1

MacBook Air, OS X Yosemite (10.10.3), 13" 1.8GHz i7, 256SSD, 4GB 1333Mhz

Posted on Apr 11, 2015 2:17 AM

Close

Q: Opening Photos first time from iPhoto on external drive - Please help!!

  • All replies
  • Helpful answers

Previous Page 2
  • by perallin,

    perallin perallin Apr 12, 2015 2:16 PM in response to lumpygumbo
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Apr 12, 2015 2:16 PM in response to lumpygumbo

    Hi lumpygumbo,

     

    Thanks for taking time to look at this issue.

     

    It turned out, that sometimes it is the "obvious"/simple things that work, such as your suggestions connecting the external hard drive, which was connected to my Airport Extreme for Wi-Fi access, with a USB cable to my Macbook Air.

     

    After doing this, Photos did its job and shortly after I was able to browse my pictures seamlessly :-) I haven't tried to connect the external hard drive to the Airport Extreme again, and then open up Photos, but I don't suspect that to be an issue, now that the initial process was a succes.

     

    Thanks again!

  • by Eugene Degiorgio,

    Eugene Degiorgio Eugene Degiorgio Apr 15, 2015 5:32 PM in response to lumpygumbo
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Apr 15, 2015 5:32 PM in response to lumpygumbo

    this worked for me

    then open prefs in photos then choose this library as your system library

     

    and it started the upload

     

    when  tried to import or use this iPhoto library it said I didn't have enough permissions i option/command and did all the list of repair, rebuild etc didn't work

    tried importing didn't work

    tried from a backup copy on my clone  didn't work

    almost gave up till i found this

     

    thanks so much

  • by John Dorsey,

    John Dorsey John Dorsey Apr 16, 2015 2:04 PM in response to Eugene Degiorgio
    Level 2 (427 points)
    Mac OS X
    Apr 16, 2015 2:04 PM in response to Eugene Degiorgio

    I think this is sufficiently on-topic that it's a good place to ask:

     

    I am - not entirely trusting of Photos yet, and intend to use iPhoto for a while yet until I figure out Photos a bit better.  But of course once you install Photos, you create a fork:  Changes in iPhoto don't show up in Photos, and vice versa.  So if I continue to use iPhoto for a year, and then switch to Photos, I'll lose a year's worth of imports and edits.  (Or, more accurately, they won't show up in my new default photo manager and editor.)

     

    So the question is, when I'm ready to move over to Photos, can I force Photos to re-import the current iPhoto library by deleting "Photos Library.photoslibrary" and thereby fool Photos into thinking it's being run for the first time?  If so, that's a pretty simple fix to a problem that is (for now) keeping me from even loading 10.3.3. onto my main machine!

     

    Thanks for any input -

  • by shalall,

    shalall shalall Nov 23, 2015 4:32 AM in response to lumpygumbo
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 23, 2015 4:32 AM in response to lumpygumbo

    Hi, I had the same problem after upgrading to Yosemite. Tried your fudge of creating an extension .photoslibrary  to the iPhoto library in my external drive. Then started Photos with alt key. After a few mins, got an error message that I need more disc space (almost 850GB) to migrate the library - astonishing, given that my iPhotos library is only 250GB. I don't have that much empty space on the external drive. At a stalemate now!

     

    Any other suggestions?

  • by shalall,

    shalall shalall Nov 23, 2015 4:33 AM in response to lumpygumbo
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 23, 2015 4:33 AM in response to lumpygumbo

    Hi, I had the same problem after upgrading to Yosemite. Tried your fudge of creating an extension .photoslibrary  to the iPhoto library in my external drive. Then started Photos with alt key. After a few mins, got an error message that I need more disc space (almost 850GB) to migrate the library - astonishing, given that my iPhotos library is only 250GB. I don't have that much empty space on the external drive. At a stalemate now!

     

    Any other suggestions?

Previous Page 2