Afraid to let go of my iPhoto Library after backing up to hard drive

iMacG5   Mac OS X (10.4.7)   </span
I have a LaCie hard drive that I am trying to put my iPhoto Library on. I have managed to copy the library to the drive but I am afraid to delete the original library from iPhoto.
Before deleting it I went to iPhoto and deleted one picture. I then turned on my LaCie drive, brought up the lPhoto library and looked for that picture. It was gone. I am afraid if I now delete my whole library it will also delete the one on my LaCie drive.
How to I transfer the library to the hard drive and then be able to delete the photo library in iPhoto and start all over again?
Thanks,
Jane

JaneBatt
Welcome to the Apple Discussions.
Caution is correct, your pics are important to you.
What procedure did you follow to move the library. Here's the best way to do it:
1. Quit iPhoto.
2. Copy the iPhoto Library Folder (that's in Home/Pictures) to the External HD.
(Now you will have the pics in both locations.)
3. hold down the Option key and launch iPhoto. It will give you a dialogue box where you can choose a library.
4. Use the dialogue box to navigate to the new location on the External HD
iPhoto will now use the library on the External HD. To confirm this: Select a photo in the iPhoto Window and right- (or Control-) Click on it, and from resulting menu choose 'Show File'. A finder window will pop up with the file selected. In Column View it's easy to trace the location of th file and confirm it's on the External HD.
Still not happy? Move the iPhoto Library Folder in Home/Pictures to the desktop. Launch iPhoto and if it cannot find a library it will ask you to locate or create one. If it does find a library and open normally, then it's the one on the External HD.
However, don't be in a rush to trash the one on the internal. Make sure that you're happy that all is working well, and then, when you're sure, trash it.
Regards
TD

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