Move Mac Photo Library To External Hard Drive
- How To Move Photo Library From External Hard Drive Back To Mac
- Move Mac Photo Library To External Drive
Moving photos library to an external hard drive with old time machine backups 0 0 Can I move my photo library on to an external hard drive that has Time Machine back ups, if the harddrive is not currently set to backup my computer through time machine (as in, it's not the selected disk). Click Other Library and navigate to the location on the external drive that holds the now-transferred Photos Library, select the Library, and then click Open. At this point, Photos will open. Apr 04, 2020 Steps to Move your Photos Library to an External Drive: Attach your external hard drive to your Mac. If you have not yet done so, format the drive. We suggest using the same filesystem format that you are using on your internal hard drive. To transfer your photos library from an Apple Mac to an external drive, you first need to locate the photos or a folder you wish to move. You can right-click and copy, then paste in the new location. Dragging and dropping will also copy the images or folder. For the step-by-step process, look below. Connect an external hard dive to move your iPhoto Library. Open a new Finder window and click 'Pictures' located in the left sidebar. Drag and drop iPhoto Library file onto the external hard drive. Once you moved iPhoto Library to an external hard drive, hold the 'Option' key on your keyboard.
Free up your space by transferring your Photos library to another external hard drive. By freeing up space you will have valuable space for your work on your Mac. In addition to this, we will help you to back up your whole photo library to iCloud.
Why store photos on external drive
In today’s world, everyone loves to capture photos of every single moment and wants to save all those moments in his/her personal devices like Mac. But saving all your photos can fill-up your Mac storage quickly and you may face the shortage of space.
Copy the Photos Library by dragging it from the startup volume to your external volume. (Your external volume has to be formatted as APFS or Mac OS Extended (Journaled): check first!) When. Jan 09, 2020 I tried to move my Photos library from a external HDD to a new external SDD. My library size is about 1.5TB. New SSD is a 2TB drive. For the 'old' library (HDD) iCloud is activated. I followed the steps in this article: Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac.
There are many options to store your photos data. One of them to store your photos on iCloud photo library but the drawback of saving your photos on iCloud is, if you delete the photo from your device it will be deleted from iCloud as well.
One question raised up here is that what we can do to store all our photos to some safe place if we are running out of space on Mac?
Fortunately, you have visited the right place to find the solution to your problem. There is a safer and easy way to transfer your entire photo library from your Mac to your external drive. The best of this trick is whenever you need to see your photos on your Mac you just need to open photo library app on your Mac it will automatically take you to your saved photos in external hard drive until unless it is plugged in.
Snapshot of the guide
There is a quick snapshot of the guide so you can understand quickly how to move the library to external drive.
- Prepare your external hard drive to move Photo Library. Make sure drive is formatted as MacOS Extended Journaled.
- Go to the location of the Photo library and move it to external drive.
- Set the external library as a System Photo Library (So whenever you open the Photos app it will open the photos library from the external hard drive.)
- After completing trasfer to drive, make sure this external drive is connected to your Mac whenever you want to access photos.
Our article will help you to move your photos from Mac to external hard drive. Continue reading the steps are about to start.
Do not worry if you have already stored your photos on iCloud photo library. Our article will help you to get back your already saved photos in iCloud photos library and will help you to move them to external hard drive. Here is how to do it.
System Photo Library vs Other Library
When you run Photos app on your Mac first time this will ask you to create a new or use an old library. That default Photo library became the system library automatically. Only System Photo Library are allowed to access iCloud services.
You can create multiple other libraries and work with photos only in one library at a time. To work in another library you have to switch the library. You can also change and set one of the other libraries as a System library.
How to transfer the Photos library to a hard drive
First, make it sure the hard drive you are going to use for Photos library is faster and have enough space. It will save your time and stored your memories quickly. A good hard drive always keeps your stuff secure and there are fewer chances of losing your data.
Before going step by step to move your photo library to external hard, first make it sure that your external hard drive is already formatted for Mac OS Extended (journaled). If it is not formatted for Mac first erase all the data from it and format and choose the option of Mac OS Extended (journaled). Use the Disk Utility on your Mac to erase any hard drive (When you erase any drive in mac everything will be deleted, so please save any important data ).
- Find the Photos Library on your Mac, it will be in your Pictures folder. Click the Go menu on the top and then select Home option from the menu.
- Open the Pictures folder and there you will find the Photos library.
TIP: In order to see how much storage your photos have taken, just Ctrl+Click on the photos library icon and click on Get Info. Now you can make sure that you have enough storage in your external hard drive. - It’s time to copy your Photos Library to your external hard drive using drag and drop trick. Now sit back and wait until copies over. The time of transferring photos depends on the size of your Photo Library.
- When transferred completed, press and hold the Option/Alt key from keyboard and click the Photos app icon from Dock to open it. Keep holding the keyboard key until you see a window otherwise this will open the Photos app.
- You will see a new window to choose the library. On that window hit the button Other library. Navigate to the new location on your external hard drive and choose the Photo Library.
- If there is a message that shows “there are some items that need to be downloaded from iCloud Photo library” then you need to click on delete incomplete items and download all those incomplete items.
Set a photo library as System Photo Library
We have already moved the library to an external drive now its time to set it as System Photo Library. Doing that will allow it to use iCloud service.
- Open the Photo Library from the external drive.
- Click Photos men and then select the Preferences option.
- On the next window click General and then click Use as System Photo Library button (this will help you to get it to work with iCloud Photo Library)
TIP: Remember this is the step you need to perform in future If you accidentally unlinked the external drive’s photo library from the Photos app. - Go to System Preferences then iCloud then Photos then Options, and choose iCloud Photo Library to turn that back on. See if you have stored all the photos here.
Note: you will need to plug in your external hard drive in order to see your photos).
Delete Photo Library from Mac
Once you have confirmed that all the photos in the library moved to the external drive. You can delete the Photo Library from your Mac computer. Go to the Pictures folder and delete it to free up space from your mac.
How to back up your iCloud Photo Library
If you want to move all your photos which you have already backed up to your iCloud photo library to a storage device connected to your Mac. Follow our step by step guide above, but you need to download all the images from iCloud first.
If you have already transferred your Photos library onto the external storage device, now you need to follow these steps.
- Open Photos on your Mac.
- Click Photos then click on Preferences.
- Click on the iCloud tab.
- Choose Download originals to this Mac.
Now all your iCloud photos will be saved on the storage device. (If you are running short of space you would probably not want to do that)
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People love taking pictures. That's one of the reasons camera phones becomes standard feature. That is also why photo management feature is crucial for any personal computer. And if you are a Mac user, one of the most popular photo management apps is iPhoto.
How To Move Photo Library From External Hard Drive Back To Mac
But sometimes you need to move your iPhoto library. One of the reasons is because photos and videos can quickly fill out your hard drive. So it might be a good idea to store them on the dedicated external drive. Another possible reason is when you want to switch to a more recent Mac version. Mac os x library java extensions free.
Combine the size of these libraries and with the metadata (content such as ratings, play counts, and ), and you need an efficient and comprehensive way to transfer iTunes or back it up. Move itunes music library from one mac to another mac. Libraries that have over 1,000 albums, multiple seasons of TV, and a few feature-length movies, podcasts, audiobooks, and more take up a lot of hard drive space.
How do you move your iPhoto library to another location?
Back Up Your iPhoto Library
Before doing anything to your library, it's better to back it up. If anything happens, you won't lose any of your precious memory. Routine backups also protect you from image files become corrupted or are unintentionally erased from your hard disk.
You can set up an external hard drive and use it with the Time Machine application to back up your photos. The app will automatically make regular backups of your computer, including your entire photo library. Just make sure that you quit iPhoto periodically before backing up or the Time Machine can't do a full backup of your library.
Create a New iPhoto Library Or Switch Between Libraries
One way that you can use to move your iPhoto library is to create multiple libraries. The advantages of taking this path are you can better organize your photos, albums, slideshows, projects (such as books, cards, and calendars), and then switch between the libraries.
For example, you could keep separate libraries for your personal photos and your work photos. Or, if you have a child who takes photos, you can keep his or her photos in a separate library.
The caveat is that you can only modify items (such as albums) or edit photos in one library at a time.
Here are the steps to create a new iPhoto library:
- Quit iPhoto. Hold down the Option key as you open iPhoto.
In the window that appears, click Create New. Type a name and choose a location to store the new photo library. Click Save.
To switch between photo libraries:
- Quit iPhoto. Hold down the Option key as you open iPhoto.
Select the library you want to switch to. Click Choose.
If you want to move photos from one library to another, use this steps:
- Export the photos from the active library. This action doesn't delete the photos from the library.
- Switch to the library you want to add them to.
- Import the photos into the new library.
Move Your iPhoto Library to a New Location/Mac
Even though you can use the multiple libraries tricks to move your photos to a different location, you can also move it by using a simple drag and drop.
- First, quit iPhoto. In the Finder, choose your home folder (it's usually named after you).
- Open the Pictures folder (in the home folder) to locate the iPhoto Library file.
For moving iPhoto library to a new location:
Drag the iPhoto Library file to a new location on your computer.
- But the process doesn't stop here. You have to tell iPhoto the new location of the library. Open iPhoto. When it can't find the library, it will ask you the location.
- In the window that appears, select the library you want, and then click Choose.
For copying iPhoto library to a new Mac:
- Connect your external hard drive. When it displays on Finder, drag the iPhoto Library folder or package to external hard drive.
- Eject the hard drive from your old Mac and connect it to this new one.
- Now open iPhoto on the new computer. Hold down the Option key on the keyboard, and keep the Option key held down until you are prompted to create or choose an iPhoto library.
That's for how to move iPhoto library to a new location or a new Mac. If you unfortunately lost some important photos during the transfer, you can use Any Data Recovery for Mac. This app is a complete Mac data recovery solutions to recover all types of files from Mac's hard drive, including recovering photo on Mac, and also from other portable devices like USB flash drive, external hard drive, SD card, iPhone.
Move Mac Photo Library To External Drive
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