How can i copy iPhoto events to an external hard drive while keeping the pictures in the events together?

Question

I have to transfer all of my events in iPhoto to an external hard drive.  When I export an event from iPhoto to the hard drive, it copies each picture but does not keep them in a named event folder.  I have over 14,000 pics in 600+ events to transfer and want to avoid doing it one event at a time.  Any suggestions?
Thanks!

Answer 1

IPhoto can't do anything with any photo that hasn't been imported into its library. Its default behavior when you import a picture is to duplicate the picture in the iPhoto Library "package" file inside ~/Pictures. This leaves the original picture wherever it was, and it can be deleted, as it is now just taking up space. Everything you do with the picture within iPhoto from now on is recorded and saved inside the iPhoto Library "package".
When iPhoto is used in that default mode, you have what is called a "managed Library". The alternative is a "referenced Library". Photos in a referenced Library can be stored anywhere that is accessible to your computer: anywhere on your internal drive or on any number of external drives, flash drives, network drives, etc., etc. IPhoto will keep track of all those original files, and whatever organization, alterations or metadata you create for them in iPhoto will be recorded in iPhoto's Library without altering the originals in their various storage locations. BUT--and this is a BIG but--if you THEN move, rename, modify, delete or reorganize any of those originals in the Finder or using other photo editing tools, iPhoto will lose track of them, and whatever you've done with them from within iPhoto will be lost. Backing up a referenced library that is stored on more than one drive is a nightmare, and restoring one from a backup is even worse. So I strongly recommend sticking wit a managed library if you intend to use iPhoto at all.
A managed library can be stored anywhere. The default location for it is in ~/Pictures on your startup drive, but you can have one there and another on an external drive if you like, or you can just have one on the external drive and none on the startup disk -- as long as the external drive is always available when you open iPhoto. If you open the application and the external drive can't be found, iPhoto will create a new iPhoto Library in the default location and will assume that's the one you want to use, until you tell it differently.
To direct iPhoto to use a particular library, hold down the Option key while clicking iPhoto in the Dock to open it. You'll be prompted to locate and select whatever library you want iPhoto to open, wherever it may reside.
I have nine iPhoto Libraries on my internal hard drive containing over 100,000 pictures in all. Each library contains pictures that have nothing to do with the pictures in any of the other libraries. I never want to be able to see the pictures in more than one of the libraries at once -- if I did, I wouldn't have separated them. Any of the libraries could be moved to another drive if I needed more space on this one, but so far I've got enough space to store them all together. That makes backing up simpler.