Format external hard drive for 'Photos' ?

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Level 1

10 points

Format external hard drive for 'Photos' ?

Going to move my entire Photos Library to a new External Hard Drive which will be connected to my iMac. Any suggestions on Formatting or anything else I might want to think about? I would edit moves with this, too.

Running 10.11.3; will connect to 'OWC Mercury On The Go Pro'

Plan to just drag my Photos Library over (it's huge -- over 400 GB). Maybe create a brand new Photos Library, too, but store it all on the EXT HD.

iMac (21.5-inch, Late 2013), OS X El Capitan (10.11.3), Macbook 2.0

Posted on Mar 29, 2016 8:54 PM

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Answer 1

theratter

Level 4

3,961 points

Mar 29, 2016 9:02 PM in response to junobear

It should be partitioned and formatted for use on your Mac:

Open Disk Utility in the Utilities folder.
After Disk Utility loads select the external hard drive (out-dented entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the side list. Click on the Partition or Erase tab in the Disk Utility toolbar. Use the adjustable Pie chart to set the number of partitions if you want more than one.
In the drop down panel set the partition scheme to GUID. Set the Format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.)
Click on the Apply button and wait Done button to activate.

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Answer 2

SBeattie2

Level 2

221 points

Mar 30, 2016 4:16 PM in response to junobear

A drive has to have at least one partition in order to be formatted. The partitioning step determines the type of partition map that will be created on the drive [GUID, MBR (master boot record), or Apple Partition Map (rarely used)]. You will want to ensure that the drive is using a GUID partition map - whether there will be a single partition or multiple partitions. If the drive currently has a GUID partition map and only one partition (basically the one partition is the entire drive) - then all you need to do is erase the drive. However - it is simply easier to just "erase" at the drive level and respecify GUID Partition Map and OS X Extended Journaled for the format. This will create a single partition consisting of the entire drive.

Connect the drive and open disk utility.

In the side bar select the external drive itself (the outdented one with the mfg name on it).

Click the Erase Tab (The erase tab is the only place where you can change the partition Map scheme to GUID)

Specify GUID partition Map - Format: OS X Extended Journaled - Provide a name for the partition - otherwise it will default to untitled.

Click erase. The erase process should take less than one minute.

The drive can now be used. It will show up as a single drive/volume comprising all available space on the drive.

You can then drag and drop your Photos Library to the external drive. This will copy rather than move the library. After successful copy and verification of the photos library on the external drive - you can then delete the library from the internal drive.

Keep in mind that your Photos Library on the external drive will no longer be backed up by Time Machine - because the external drive will be excluded from the Time Machine backup process (you can go into Time Machine settings and tell it to include the external drive). You need to ensure that you have adequate backups of the Photos library elsewhere in case the external drive fails.

~Scott

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