1. How To Copy Photos Library To External Drive Mac
2. Apple Photos Library External Drive

Photos User Guide

Even if you use iCloud Photos, it’s important that you always back up your library locally using one of the following methods:

• Use Time Machine: After you set up Time Machine, it automatically backs up the files on your Mac. If you ever lose the files in your Photos library, you can restore them from the Time Machine backup. For more information about setting up Time Machine, see Back up your files with Time Machine.

  WARNING: If a Photos library is located on an external drive, don’t use Time Machine to store a backup on that external drive. The permissions for your Photos library may conflict with those for the Time Machine backup.

• Manually copy your library to an external storage device: Drag the Photos library (by default in the Pictures folder on your Mac) to your storage device to create a copy.

If you have more than one photo library, be sure to back them all up.

Important: If any of your image files are stored outside your photo library, those files (known as referenced files) aren’t backed up when you back up your library. Be sure to back up those files separately. To make it easier to back up all your image files at once, you can consolidate referenced files into your library. See Change where Photos stores your files.

1. If you want to free up precious space on your Mac computer, then you can move your Mac's iPhoto Library on to an external hard drive. You can also move iPhoto Library to cloud storage service such as Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, iCloud Drive, Box and more.
2. Manually copy your library to an external storage device: Drag the Photos library (by default in the Pictures folder on your Mac) to your storage device to create a copy. If you have more than one photo library, be sure to back them all up.
3. Sep 25, 2013  This is how to move iPhoto photos to an external hard drive. On most newer Macs that are flash-based and/or Macs that are running out of internal hard disk space, storing photos on an external.
4. Navigate to your user account’s Pictures folder. 5) Connect an external hard drive, a USB thumb drive or other storage device to your Mac, wait until its icon appears on the desktop. Now drag the “Photos Library.photoslibrary” file from the Pictures folder on the storage device icon.
5. Related: How to Move Your iTunes Library to an External Drive. By default, your System Photo Library is stored in the Pictures folder on your Mac. If, like me, you take lots of pics, hard drive or solid-state drive can fill up easily, especially since more Macs ship with limited storage. However, you can move the System Photo Library to an.

How To Copy Photos Library To External Drive Mac

Copy the Photos Library to the external drive. You can drag and drop. Wait while it copies over - this may take a while depending on the size of your library and the speed of the connection to the.

Your Photos library holds all your photos, albums, slideshows, and print projects. If your library is large, and you want to free up storage space on your Mac, turn on iCloud Photo Library and use Optimize Mac Storage, or move your library to an external drive.

Before you start, be sure to back up your library.

Prepare your drive

You can store your library on an external storage device, such as a USB or Thunderbolt drive formatted as APFS or Mac OS Extended (Journaled).¹ Find out how to check the format of your external storage device.

How to clean up iTunes library free on Mac? People normally think of doing this with apple iTunes itself. Though it is indeed free software to clean up iTunes library, iTunes does not provide a straightforward solution to finding out duplicates or missing songs (albums, artists, lyrics). Steps to Clear iTunes Library Easily and Quickly. Step 1: Back Up Your iTunes Library. You need back up the iTunes library before you clear it up. Enter 'File Library Consolidate Library' to copy all data files to the iTunes Music folder. Then move the folder to an external drive or another folder on your device. To begin cleaning up your library, select the Clean option and drag up to 500 tracks into the TuneUp window that attaches itself to the right side of the iTunes window. TuneUp connects to the. Clean itunes library mac.

To prevent data loss, Apple doesn't recommend storing photo libraries on external storage devices like SD cards and USB flash drives, or drives that are shared on a network.

Move your Photos library to an external storage device

1. Quit Photos.
2. In the Finder, go to the external drive where you want to store your library.
3. In another Finder window, find your library. The default location is Users > [username] > Pictures, and it's named Photos Library.
4. Drag your library to its new location on the external drive. If you see an error, select your external drive's icon in the Finder, then choose File > Get Info. If the information under Sharing & Permissions isn't visible, click , then make sure the 'Ignore ownership on this volume' checkbox is selected. If it's not selected, click to unlock it, enter an administrator name and password, then select the checkbox.²
   
   
5. After the move is finished, double-click Photos Library in its new location to open it.
6. If you use iCloud Photo Library, designate this library as the System Photo Library.

Delete original library to save space

After you open your library from its new location and make sure that it works as expected, you can delete the library from its original location.

In a Finder window, go back to your Pictures folder (or whichever folder you copied your library from) and move Photos Library to the trash. Then choose Finder > Empty Trash to delete the library and reclaim disk space.

Open another Photos library

Apple Photos Library External Drive

If you have multiple libraries, here's how to open a different one:

1. Quit Photos.
2. Press and hold the Option key while you open Photos.
3. Select the library that you want to open, then click Choose Library.

Photos uses this library until you open a different one.

Learn more

If you have a permissions issue with your library, you might be able to resolve the issue by using the Photos library repair tool.

1. You can't move your library to a disk that's used for Time Machine backups.

2. If the volume isn't formatted APFS or Mac OS Extended (Journaled), or has been used for Time Machine backups but hasn't been erased, this checkbox will either not be present, or won't be selectable after unlocking. Erase and reformat the drive for this option to be available.