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

Try cloning it over (Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper) - often they will do the job when he finder copy will not

LN

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?

Hi Terence,

Thanks for the information on how to move the photos library to the external drive. I ran into a problem and wonder if you have any advice on this. While the library is copying, about 4GB into the process it stalls with the following error message: The Finder can't complete the operation because some data in "Photos Library.photoslibrary" can't be read or overwritten. (Error code -36). I made sure that the sharing and permissions are set to read/write and can't find anything unusual in my photos.

For those waiting a long time (more than 2 hours) for photos to copy FROM an external hard drive TO Mac: After consulting with at least 4 Apple support staff members, including the senior advisor, I figured it out on my own. When transferring to a new Mac, make sure you OPEN the photos app so that it automatically creates the photos library first. THEN copy the photos from your hard drive to your Mac. After that, took less than an hour (I had 83 gigs of photos to transfer). Ugh, I wish Apple support thought of this as reason when troubleshooting!

Hi PixelTacos,

Did you get an answer to this question? Or did you try moving your library? I have my Photos system library on an external drive (and on iCloud) and I want to move it to my Mac internal drive but can't find advice about this. Hoping you'll know.

Hi,

I have this same problem too! but the very first few seems to miss the main question..

or maybe they are too advanced.

I wonder if there are others like me who dont what they are up to?

Maybe there should be a more simpler explanations for computer illiterates like me!

mike

I had the same question but now I'd like to give my family a full copy of the entire catalog including all the pictures, all 40K of them sorted into folders and albums.

Is the procedure the same?

Thanks

Hi there. Hate to bother you. But I'm trying to move my photo ibrary to an external drive. I use iCloud drive storage, but my photos on the Mac (the back up) still take up almost 200G and I need to move them out to get back functionality. The copying to the GTech drive, Mac OS extended journaled goes well until the last 10 minutes of the approximately 60 min transfer when I get the dreaded error 36 below. But there is no dialogue box that lists the files causing the problem. So I have no idea what to delete or repair. 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?

Any suggestions from any users would be helpful. Several of the answers in the thread have already been quite helpful.

Thanks!!

Rosa

"The Finder can’t complete the operation because some data in “iPhoto Library.migratedphotolibrary” can’t be read or written.

(Error code -36)"

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.

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

what is the format of the EHD?

LN

Mac OS Extended (Journaled)