How do I move my photos library to an external drive?

You are probably correct. It does make sense that Photos would use the Photos library, not the iPhoto. After taking a second look at the two folders, it seems like I may have misinterpreted what I saw in finder about the new Photos library not having been modified since October. To answer your question, I do have iCloud Photo library enabled, and yes it is set to download originals to this Mac. I'm going to give it a shot tomorrow, as soon as I get the external drive set up.

I see that attitude a lot, Stance. Just thank them and move on.

The advice is usually fairly good - if sometimes incomplete and snarky.*

However, there are some goofy things that can happen, so, you may wish to reread the whole thread to be sure you get all the advice. I did and it was helpful.

I would add that when I copied my very large photo library to a large external hard drive, I had some bad files that stopped the copy from completing. Infuriating. It was many many Gigs, so it took a while to discover each bad file. I just started it and walked away - came back and read and made a note of the file name in the dialogue box. I ended up taking the time to copy that library over manually multiple times and each time it stopped, I went into the actual folders to pick out the files that stopped the copy process. Delete. After a few files were removed, the copy process went over without a hitch, and I redirected my photo program (crappy program that it is) to use the newly copied library on my Mac OS formatted (journaled) external hard-drive and it has worked flawlessly. Yea!

After a few days I made a second backup on another drive as a snapshot in time in case something catastrophic happened to my main library. Then I deleted the original library to get a ton of room back on my main iMac hard drive.

Good luck!

-r.

* Often times folks who know a lot about something have invested a lot of time and have a real interest in the details of something and feel like everyone else should take the same approach. What they don't realize is that many people just what their tools to work. After all, Apple users often want a tool - not a project. When asking for help, Apple users are mostly wanting a simple e fix. The bad news is, that's not always possible. Perhaps we are actually the tools of the computer/software companies? Oh well, smile and move on, right?

Thank you for your helpful answers. I've been reading through replies trying to find an answer to my question: how do I get rid of files/photos that are preventing me from copying? I have tried to copy Photos to my external hard drive, it's formatted correctly, but then it says some info can't be found. I'll do it again so I can screenshot the image. I've also tried the "select all--> consolidate--> then copy" but in the middle of consolidating the following message pops up:

I do not have an iPhoto Library folder. So, it seems that I cannot fix it...any help is greatly appreciated.

If you had included the fact that you had enabled the iCloud Photo Library and how you had your files optimized or not then the first answer by TD would have include the other caveats needed for the moving the library to a new volume. We can only answer in relation to the info we're given.

Ok but iCloud is not a backup as any change made using any connected device is made to all devices - and so far no cloud device has been shown to be successful at providing a usable backup of the Photo library - as Apple states you need a local backup

iCloud Photo Library - Apple Support

Back up your photos and videos

When you turn on iCloud Photo Library, your photos and videos automatically upload to iCloud. They're not duplicated in your iCloud backup. But we always recommend that you keep back up copies of your library. You can download your photos and videos from iCloud.com to your computer and store them as a separate library, transfer them to another computer with Image Capture or Photos, or store them on a separate drive.

LN

Sounds like you actually did have a box that listed the files? Or did you have to click into something else to get a description of the files?

You will see, which files cannot be copied, if you copy the library in parts.

• Create a new, empty folder "Photos Library Part" on the destination drive.
• ctrl-click the Photos Library on your old drive and select "Show Package Contents".
• Now drag each subfolder separately to the folder "Photos Library Part".
• If a folder fails to copy because of the error message, look how far it copied and skip the files with the name conflicts. Copy them to a different folder, if it are media files you want to save .
• Once all parts of the library have been copied, rename "Photos Library Part" to "Photos Library New.photoslibrary" and try to open it in Photos.

My situation has a slight twist and I just want to clarify before I dive in. I just bought a new MacBook Pro to ultimately replace my old MacBook. The old MacBook was upgraded to Sierra last fall, and that included moving from iPhoto to Photos. I also at that time enrolled in iCloud. Anyway the new MacBook Pro has a rather small hard drive, so I decided to move my photo library to an external drive (haven't done it yet). Looking in the Pictures folder, there is both an iPhoto library, and a Photos library. My first assumption was that the old iPhoto library had been superseded by the Photos library, but looking at the data, it looks like Photos is using the iPhoto library (iPhoto library is larger and last date of access is last time I used Photos, while the last date on Photos library appears to be when it was created back in October 2016) as its library, even though under Photos/preferences it shows that the Photos library is the current library. So, the question is, why is it doing this, and which of the two libraries do I choose when designating the System Library on the external drive?

Photos is not using the iPhoto library as Photos can not access an iPhoto library except to migrate it - each library is separate and totally independent of the other

In Photos do you have iCloud Photo library enabled? If yes is it set to download originals to this Mac or to use optimized photos?

LN

I just got the EHD, a Toshiba 500 GB. I had planned on partitioning it into two 250 GBs and use one for Photos library and the other for Time machine (Photos library is about 75 GB). Are you saying that won't work? If no, I'll leave it as-is. I'm having difficulty doing even the partition. Disc utility lets me erase, rename and format the drive to Mac OS extended (journaled), but the partition button is always grayed out. Any ideas on that subject?

I had planned on partitioning it into two 250 GBs and use one for Photos library and the other for Time machine (Photos library is about 75 GB). Are you saying that won't work?

Of course not as I had no idea what you were have or were planning to do -- what I said was

What format is the EHD? For Photos it can only be Mac OS extended (journaled), not used as a Time Machine backup volume and connected with a fast wired connection

A correctly connected and formatted partition will work just fine

Disc utility lets me erase, rename and format the drive to Mac OS extended (journaled), but the partition button is always grayed out. Any ideas on that subject?

No that probably is a question best posted in the forum for your OS - it has nothing to do with Photos for Mac

LN

'm running a 2009 imac on El Capitan for my 180 gig of images stored on Photos. I'd like to copy all the photos in the albums to an external drive formatted to exFat so they can be accessed by both my Mac and my PC computers, with each album converted to a file folder. Is there any way to do so, other than manually creating a folder for each album and copying the contents?

It looks like you have some referenced photos and that the referenced originals are not available - one of several reasons that referenced libraries are strongly not reecommended

Make a new smart album - file menu ==> new smart album - for photos is referenced and see what is found

LN

So what does it mean when it says delete incomplete items?? That is what I am concerned about. I don't want anything deleted that I am trying to save to the EHD and use that as my Photo library from there to free up space!

It means you have optimized photos in your library and need to download the originals or delete the photos - prior to moving the Photos library yo need to download all originals to it (set the Photos preference to do that)

LN

"Hold down the option (or alt) key while launching Photos. 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."

When I did this, I never got the menu to choose library. Please advise.