Error Moving Photos Library

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Level 1

17 points

Error Moving Photos Library

I moved my photos library to an external drive temporarily and now I am trying to move it back to another external drive where I usually store it. However, I am getting an error every time I try to move it. I get the same error if I try to move it back to my mac's internal drive as well. See the photo below:

The drive I am trying to move it to has just been formatted and is completely empty. I formatted it in Mac OS Journaled and I have formatted it to APFS to see if that changed anything and it did not. Same error either way and again, I get the same error moving it to my mac's internal drive. I even renamed the photos file to see if that changed anything and it did not. I moved my wife's photos library to the external drive as a test and it worked perfectly. No issues moving it at all. So something is going on inside my photos library file.

Just so you have all the data, I was moving it around to reformat the drive from a case sensitive format to non-case sensitive because I was getting an error moving photos and videos from my iPhone to my mac and was told this may be the solution. This is the original error that started this fiasco.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you

iMac with Retina 5K display, macOS High Sierra (10.13.3)

Posted on Feb 9, 2018 7:35 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

léonie

Level 10

195,031 points

Feb 10, 2018 12:04 PM in response to jrocket16

The error message is probably misleading. There may be files and folders inside the Photos Library, that have names that will be in conflict on a non-case sensitive drive.

Since the library and the Live Photos will not work on your case.sensitive drive, there is no help but to move the library over. Try to copy it 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.

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Answer 2

jrocket16 Author

Level 1

17 points

Feb 10, 2018 12:10 PM in response to léonie

Thank you for the help. Both of my issues are now resolved. With the drive formatted without a "case sensitive" setting, I am fully able to import photos and videos from my iPhone to photos on my iMac.

Also, I was able to move my photos library to my iMac's internal drive or the external drive I wanted it on. Going through the folders inside the the photos library file, while very time consuming, did reveal multiple files with identical names when you ignore case. So IMG_0001.jpg and IMG_0001.JPG were both in the same folder. That obviously will not work if a drive is set to ignore upper and lower case.

Thanks again for the help. I greatly appreciate it.

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