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User profile for user: brandst
brandst Author
User level: Level 1
1 points

Unsupported format for photos library

I have copied my photos library to an external seagate hard drive. I have not deleted the library from my computer hard drive until I confirm I can open it from the external drive. When I hold down option and open Photos and navigate to the library on the external hard drive, I receive the following message - "The library “Photos Library 2” is stored on a drive that uses an unsupported disk format. To access this library, copy it to the internal drive on your Mac or to a drive that uses a supported format." What can I do? The hard drive as far as I can tell is working with my Mac. I am able to open other files from the drive.


Thanks!


Stephanie

MacBook Air, OS X Yosemite (10.10.5)

Posted on Sep 25, 2015 6:24 PM

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3 replies
User profile for user: LarryHN
LarryHN
User level: Level 10
106,110 points

Sep 25, 2015 7:06 PM in response to brandst

The Photos library can only be on a drive formatted Mac OS extended (journaled) and it must be connected with a direct fast wired connection like USB, FireWire or Thunderbolt and can not be used as a TimeMachine Backup - what format is your EHD? Right click on it in the finder and get info to see the format


If it is not the correct format (and it most likely is not) then you can not use it for your photos library unless you use disk utility to reformat it with the correct format - forrmating erases everything so so not do this unless you have everything safely backed up.


Otherwise you will need to use a different disk that is correctly formatted and connected


LN

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User profile for user: brandst
brandst Author
User level: Level 1
1 points

Sep 25, 2015 8:32 PM in response to LarryHN

Thanks for the quick and detailed response! I am using a direct fast wired connection. The format of my EHD is Windows NT Filesystem. When using disk utility to reformat, will I have options on what format to use? what should I select? Will I still be able to drag and drop files to this hard drive after I reformat? I was using it to store other types of documents such as iMovie library, MS Excel and MS Word files, etc.


Thank you so much!

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Unsupported format for photos library

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