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Lurkums Author

Level 4

1,514 points

Migrating Mac Photos Library from Internal HDD to external drive

I do not use iCloud for my pictures nor do i wish to do so. I have many thousand pictures and the monthly cost is too great for me.

I have a MacBook Pro that is on its knees, and am likely to buy a new MacBook Air, but there is insufficient internal storage. Even a 1.5TB internal SSD will not be enough, and it costs a fortune.

My plan is to have sufficient internal SSD storage on the new machine to run my main software and manage my storage needs, and to migrate my Photos library from my current internal 2TB drive to an external caddy connected via the thunderbolt port.

I am sure some of you have done this before. What I think I need to do is a simple copy of the Photos library to the yet unacquired external drive, and then point Photos on the new machine to it.

Please does anyone have any pointers for me? Are there any gotchas I need to be aware of?

OBS,MacBook Pro (13-inch Mid 2009), macOS Sierra (10.12.6), null

Posted on Nov 15, 2018 4:08 PM

Top-ranking reply

léonie

Level 10

197,147 points

Posted on Nov 16, 2018 12:00 PM

This knowledge base article by Apple describes has to move a Photos Library to an external drive:

Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support

Some more notes on moving a library are here: Where is it safe to store a Photos Library? Requirements for the external drive

Just remember, when you move your library to an external drive, it will no longer be included in your regular Time Machine backups of your Mac, unless you make sure, that the external drive will be included in the Time Machine backup. Alternately, you should get yourself an additional drive, where e regularly copy or backup your Photos Library too.

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Migrating Mac Photos Library from Internal HDD to external drive

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