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

Robert ... Same problem here. Did you find a solution?

Yes.

Thank you. I'll try this today.

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 My first assumption was that the old iPhoto library had been superseded by the Photos library, but looking at the data, it looks like Photos is using the iPhoto library (iPhoto library is larger and last date of access is last time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.

HI TD,

So i have followed the steps and copied my photos library to an external drive and now that's the default drive.

The question i have is, all the new photos imported will be copied to the external as long as it is connected, but how do I view the photos on my laptop when i am not around the external, as its a desktop drive i copied it to. Since this won't be backup by time machine how do i make sure there is a backup if anything does go wrong to the external. Any suggestions ?

Thank you

S

The question i have is, all the new photos imported will be copied to the external as long as it is connected, but how do I view the photos on my laptop when i am not around the external

In a nutshell, you don't. The Library is on the external. If you don't have the external you don't have the Library.

Since this won't be backup by time machine how do i make sure there is a backup if anything does go wrong to the external.

Yes it can be backed up by time machine. it's a setting.

In the Time Machine preferences ==> options add any volumes or files you do not want to backup - delete any that you do what to backup (by default external drives are not backed up so you have to remove them from the list)

LN