I use a Macbook Air. Because the storage is limited I keep pictures on a portable hard drive. I recently downloaded the new Photos App. Why am I unable to see my iphoto library? Yes, the portable drive is plugged in. I did check it with Disk Utility to see if it was corrupted. It is fine.
MacBook Air (13-inch Mid 2012), OS X Yosemite (10.10.3)
Yes, if the drive is formatted as Mac OS Extended. Launch Photos with the Option key held down, click on Other Library if needed, and choose it; alternatively, drag the library to the Photos icon in the Dock.
(126856)
Thank you but this is not working. Either way I get the message about not having the necessary permissions. The external harddrive is properly formatted and I did the check to see if it is corrupted. It is not. The instructions to fix the "necessary permissions" error message do not appear to apply to external hard drives.
Instead of typing out the path, drag the Photos library into the Terminal window.
(126860)
You don't need the terminal. Just set the drive to ignore ownership in its Info window:
If all else fails try repartitioning, one for the whole drive, in Disk Utility and reformat. You will lose any files that are on it so back them up to another drive beforehand.
Then verify the ignore ownership.
Thank you Old Toad, your solution worked perfectly for me. 🙂
Will Photos app work if I keep my pictures on a portable hard drive?
