How To Move Mac Photo Library To External Drive

Apr 04, 2020  Right click on the Photos library icon and select Get Info. Verify that you have enough free space for the library on the external drive. Mac find library path. Drag and drop the Photos library icon onto the hard drive icon either in Finder or on your Desktop. Wait for the copy to complete. Jun 11, 2012  Move Your iPhoto Library To An External Drive To Save Space OS X Tips By Rob LeFebvre. 6:00 am, June 11, 2012 Most of us have considered moving out iTunes library to an external hard drive. Jun 04, 2019  Move photos, files, and mail from Mac to Surface. Content provided by Microsoft. Unplug the external drive from your Mac. Copy photos to your Surface. You don’t need to copy the Photo Library folder in Pictures if you already moved your photos over.

  1. How To Move Mac Photo Library To External Drive Iphone
  2. Move Mac Photo Library To External Hard Drive
  3. How To Move Mac Photo Library To External Drive File
  4. How To Move Photo Library From External Hard Drive Back To Mac
How To Move Mac Photo Library To External Drive

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.

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

How To Move Mac Photo Library To External Drive Iphone

  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

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

Move Mac Photo Library To External Hard Drive

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.

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. You need to have an account on these cloud storage services. If you are looking for a step by step process to move iPhoto Library onto an external hard drive, read below.

Here are the steps to Move Your Mac's iPhoto Library onto an External Drive:

Mac

How To Move Mac Photo Library To External Drive File

  1. Open 'iPhoto' on your Mac.
  2. Click 'File' located in the Menu Bar.
  3. Select 'Switch to Library..' option.
  4. A new window opens up. You will see all iPhoto libraries located on your computer.
  5. Quit iPhoto by clicking on 'Quit iPhoto' located in the iPhoto Menu bar.
  6. Connect an external hard dive to move your iPhoto Library.
  7. Open a new Finder window and click 'Pictures' located in the left sidebar.
  8. Drag and drop iPhoto Library file onto the external hard drive.
  9. Once you moved iPhoto Library to an external hard drive, hold the 'Option' key on your keyboard.
  10. Open 'iPhoto' from the Dock or Application folder.
  11. A new window opens up. It will ask you to 'Create a New Library'.
  12. Choose the 'Selected Library' or 'Other Library'.
  13. Click 'Other Library'.
  14. Navigate to your external hard drive and click 'iPhoto Library' file that you have copied and click 'Choose' button.
  15. Quit 'iPhoto' once again and eject the external hard drive.
  16. Open a new 'Finder' window and navigate to the 'Picture' folder.
  17. Right-click on the iPhoto file and move it to the 'Trash'.
  18. Open 'Trash' from the 'Finder' window and click 'Empty Trash' located at the top right corner.
  19. Your iPhoto Library has officially been removed from the internal drive.

How To Move Photo Library From External Hard Drive Back To Mac

Quick Tip to Backup your Digital Photos
If you have treasured photographs, or you take photos of everything you like, you won't want to lose them. So, what is the best way to backup photos on an ongoing basis? In the back of your mind, you know you need to backup all of your photos. But where do you start? Here's how to backup your digital life: PicBackMan is the easiest and simplest way to keep your videos safely backed up in one or more online accounts. Simply download PicBackMan (it's free!), register your account, connect to your online store and tell PicBackMan where your videos are - PicBackMan does the rest, automatically. It bulk uploads all videos and keeps looking for new ones and uploads those too. You don't have to ever touch it.