Running photos from an external hdd

Question

Guylewis1977 Author

Level 1

0 points

Running photos from an external hdd

Hello,

I'Ve run out of space on my MacBook 7,1, and have transferred all my photos and music to an external hdd. I'm now trying to run them using the hdd as the target folder. iTunes works perfectly, but I can't get photos to work. When I try and open the photos library from the hdd, it tells me it's an unsupported disk format. It's a Samsung 1tb m3, and I've installed the Mac driver- something called paragon ntfs for Mac, so it should be compatible.

Any any help would be much appreciated!

OS X Yosemite (10.10.3)

Posted on May 25, 2015 1:44 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Best reply

léonie

Level 10

194,723 points

May 25, 2015 2:18 AM in response to Guylewis1977

. It's a Samsung 1tb m3, and I've installed the Mac driver- something called paragon ntfs for Mac, so it should be compatible.

That is sufficient to store single documents and data, but does not work with photo libraries. Photo Libraries are a package of internally linked media files and database files, and the links will not work on a drive with a wrong filesystem. The drive needs to be formatted MacOS Extended (Journaled) and locally mounted via USB, Thunderbolt, or another wired connection.

See this support document how to format a drive to be used with a photo library, like iPhoto Library, Photos Library, or Aperture Library:

Format external drives to Mac OS Extended before using with Aperture

Reply