Photos Library System Location: confused??

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Level 1

6 points

Photos Library System Location: confused??

I am currently running a MacBook Pro (Late 2011) 13-inch, running macOS Sierra 10.12.6 and Dual Drive System (MacOS running on the 480GB SSD and a second 500GB HDD for media). I have moved my entire Photos application (by moving the entire library and system files into my HDD). However, my Photos app seems to be eating up my SSD space rather than utilise the HDD space, even though the entire Photos app is located in the HDD and not the SSD. Anyone face the same issue and/or have a solution to this?

MacBook Pro, OS X El Capitan (10.11.2), 13-inch, Late 2011

Posted on Nov 14, 2017 11:24 PM

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Answer 1

léonie

Level 10

194,755 points

Nov 14, 2017 11:36 PM in response to Deldelcai

You have to move the Photos Library manually to your second drive. Photos does not move the library, just because you move the system and the applications to a different drive.

By default your Photos Library will be created in the Pictures folder of your System drive, unless you move it. Did you drag the Photos Library to your Desktop folder? I wonder how it got moved to the Desktop. If you want the Photos Library on your Media drive, drag it from your Desktop to a folder on your second drive. Then double click the copy on the media drive to open it in Photos and test it thoroughly, before you delete the library from the system drive.

But you can only use the media drive for your photos, if the file system is compatible with Photos. The file system format needs to be MacOS Extended (Journaled). And the format should not be case sensitive, if the system drive is not formatted case sensitive.

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Answer 2

Deldelcai Author

Level 1

6 points

Nov 15, 2017 12:04 AM in response to léonie

I have moved my entire Photos Library to the second drive. The "Desktop" folder is a folder in my second drive that used to be my startup disk before I changed it to the SSD. The HDD is already formatted as HFS+ as well. The entire Photos app is nowhere to be found on my SSD and only present in the HDD folder, so I'm really confused because it's taking up my SSD space which I store more recent documents and the entire photo library is not using the space on the HDD which I intended it for...

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