How do I transfer iPhoto library to an external hard drive?

How do I transfer my iphoto library to an external hard drive. Dragging it does not seem to work.

Erasing the drive won't affect the content of the iPhoto library. If you don't want to reformat that drive, buy another.
Even if you do install software which enables the Mac to write to NTFS drives, the volume containing an iPhoto library needs to be formatted as Mac OS Extended.
(107500)

Similar Messages

  • How do I transfer my library to an External Hard-drive

    I would like to free up space on my laptop and export my Itunes library to my external hard drive. I saw this same question and it was answered but I couldn't find it in the discussion topics again.
    HP zd8000   Windows XP   30 GB Ipod

    First move your itunes music folder by going to edit>preferences>Advanced tab>general sub tab hit the "Change" button and select the external drive then hit ok
    Now goto Advanced>consolidate library.
    When you consolidate the library, this COPIES all files listed in itunes to the "iTUnes Music" folder (Which should now be on your external drive) and points itunes to these copies. Once its done you have to manually go into your C drive on the laptop and delete the music thats still there

  • How do I move iPhoto library to an external hard drive?

    I'm Running iPhoto 08 under leopard, and because my old laptop hard drive is just too small, I've cloned it onto an external hard drive.  I have relocated my iTunes library to the external drive and would now like to do the same to my iPhoto library so that I can free up much needed space on the iBooks drive.
    How should I do this?  I also have pictures from an earlier iphoto library on another computer.  I would like to bring these into my main iphoto library and consolidate the two.  Is this possible?

    1. Drag it over, launch iPhoto with the Option key held down, and point it there.
    2. Use the iPhoto Library Manager.
    (58842)

  • How to transfer a copy or duplicate of my iPhoto library to an external hard drive.

    I would like to save a copy of my iPhoto library on an external hard drive (InfoSafe) that has been reformatted to Mac OS Extended file system (journaled).  I want the photos to be moved in the same Events they are in and with all of their metadata. 
    Then I want to delete some of those pictures or events from iPhoto on my computer.   I am using OS X 10.8.5 and my iPhoto '11 9.4.3.  Once I do this and make sure it works and everything is where it is supposed to be, can I just stick the hard drive in a safe place for years?
    Thank you.
    Wendy

    Make sure the drive is formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
    1. Quit iPhoto
    2. Copy the iPhoto Library from your Pictures Folder to the External Disk.
    Now you have two full versions of the Library.
    3. On the Internal library, trash the Events you don't want there
    Now you have a full copy of the Library on the External and a smaller subset on the Internal
    Some Notes:
    As a general rule: when deleting photos do them in batches of about 100 at a time. iPhoto can baulk at trashing large numbers at one go.
    You can choose which Library to open: Hold down the option (or alt) key key and launch iPhoto. From the resulting menu select 'Choose Library'
    You can keep the Library on the external updated with new imports using iPhoto Library Manager
    Once I do this and make sure it works and everything is where it is supposed to be, can I just stick the hard drive in a safe place for years?
    No. Hard Drives are volatile and can be damaged. Over time the connection protocols change - USB 1 to USB 2 to USB 3. Firewire is almost dead and so on - and HDs fail. Multiple, redundant back ups are required. And when a back up is a copy of two drives at least, you won't have an actual back up for any of the material you then remove from the laptop.
    For long term archiving I use Flickr. Then backing up the photos becomes their problem but it works in other ways as well - images available from any computer, as future-proof as just about anything is, and you can set the privacy protocols to keep the material private.

  • I am trying to transfer my photos from old mac to new mac.  I copied the iPhoto library to an external hard drive, then imported it to the new iPhoto.  It turned my 2000 photos into 12,000!!  What happened?

    And how do I turn off FACES? 

    I copied the iPhoto library to an external hard drive, then imported it to the new iPhoto.  It turned my 2000 photos into 12,000!!
    According to you youo did not do what I instructed - you said you imported the old library into th enew library which can easily take a 2000 photo library and turn it into 12,000 including two ro three versions of each photo pus all the face thumbnails
    The correct procedure has NO importing involved
    drag the iPhoto library intact as a single entity from the old Mac to the pictures folder of the new Mac - launch iPhoto on the new mac
    That is it
    LN

  • How do I move my iphoto library from one external hard drive to another?

    how do I move my iphoto library from one external hard drive to another?

    Drag it there in the Finder and then launch iPhoto with the Option key held down. Point it to the new instance of the library.
    (58012)

  • How do I backup my iPhoto Library to an external hard drive and keep my photos grouped by their events?

    How can I backup my iPhoto Library to an external hard drive and keep my photos grouped by their events?

    I have attempted to make sure my iPhoto library has been backed up on the external hard drive and that it is safe to delete some events from my internal hard drive
    You need to think this through.
    Time Machine is a back up application. It keeps a rolling back up of the data. It's called rolling because it means you can revert to the data you had on a specific date and time. But that's not eternal, and as time goes by, and your drive fills up, older backups are deleted. So if you delete Events on your Mac they will - eventually - also be deleted from the Time Machine back up.
    If you wan tot archive data hendon't use Time Machine for that job. Here's how you might archive an iPhoto Library:
    Make sure the drive is formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
    1. Quit iPhoto
    2. Copy the iPhoto Library from your Pictures Folder to the External Disk.
    Now you have two full versions of the Library.
    3. On the Internal library, trash the Events you don't want there
    Now you have a full copy of the Library on the External and a smaller subset on the Internal
    Some Notes:
    As a general rule: when deleting photos do them in batches of about 100 at a time. iPhoto can baulk at trashing large numbers at one go.
    You can choose which Library to open: Hold down the option (or alt) key key and launch iPhoto. From the resulting menu select 'Choose Library'
    You can keep the Library on the external updated with new imports using iPhoto Library Manager

  • How can i move my Iphoto library to an external hard drive?

    How do I move my Iphoto library to an external hard drive?

    Here's a worflow for that:
    Make sure the drive is formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
    1. Quit iPhoto
    2. Copy the iPhoto Library from your Pictures Folder to the External Disk.
    Now you have two full versions of the Library.
    3. On the Internal library, trash the Events you don't want there
    Now you have a full copy of the Library on the External and a smaller subset on the Internal
    Some Notes:
    As a general rule: when deleting photos do them in batches of about 100 at a time. iPhoto can baulk at trashing large numbers at one go.
    You can choose which Library to open: Hold down the option (or alt) key key and launch iPhoto. From the resulting menu select 'Choose Library'
    You can keep the Library on the external updated with new imports using  iPhoto Library Manager

  • I copied my iPhoto library to an external hard drive and all the event windows are black. Once you click on a square the photos are still there. How do I fix that?

    I copied my iPhoto library to an external hard drive and the event windows show up black.
    The photos are still there once I click on an event but they don't show in the window.
    My next step is to delete the iPhoto library from the internal memory to free some memmory space but I don't want to do this until I see that the library works fine on the external hard drive.
    How do I fix that?

    Hold down the "option" + "command" keys and launch iPhoto.
    Select the "Rebuild Thumbnails" choice.

  • I'm trying to transfer my pictures from my iPhoto library to my external hard drive. I dragged the iPhoto Library folder into the drive and after waiting a while it says Error Code -36. I need to free up space asap, what should i do?

    I'm trying to transfer my pictures from my iPhoto library to my external hard drive. I dragged the iPhoto Library folder into the drive and after waiting a while it says "Error Code -36 The finder cannot complete the operation because some data in 'iPhoto Library' could not be read or written". I need to free up space asap, what should i do??

    Yes, the Old Master file has a folder for each year where I find all photos from that specific year. I am attaching a screen shot of the file.
    In the meantime i have managed to download all photos (it did not download any video files though in mpg, avi, 3gp, m4v,mp4 and mov format) to a new iphoto library. Unfortunately the photos are quite mixed and often doubled up. I ma considering to purchase iphoto library which checks all duplicates in iphoto. this will save me a lot of time. What do you think?

  • I moved my iPhoto library to a external hard drive to free up space on my iMac per instructions, but the library is still on my iMac so I don't have much room left.  How do I get rid of the all the contents of my library on my iMac so just on backup drive

    As per Apple instructions, I moved my iPhoto library to an external hard drive so that I could free up space on my full iMac.  However, I was not told the last step in the process -- How do I get the iPhoto library off my iMac so I free up that memory?

    And after deleting the old Library, you should start up iPhoto while holding down the Option key in order to force iPhoto to let you select your iPhoto Library that is on your external hard drive.  If you start up iPhoto the usual way, it will just create a new, blank iPhoto Library in your /users/yourusername/Pictures folder on your iMac's internal hard drive.

  • I was trying to move my photos from the iPhoto library to an external hard drive.  I now have a desktop display of thousands of cascading photos.  How do I remove them from my desktop screen?

    I was trying to move my photos from the iPhoto library to an external hard drive.  I now have a desktop display of thousands of cascading photos.  How do I remove them from my desktop screen?

    Strangely enough we can not see you so it really helps if you share with use exactly what you have, exactly what you did and details about the problem
    what version of iPhoto and of the OS? What exact steps did you do? where are you seeing these "thousands of cascading photos" now and using what software and what exactly did you want to accomplish
    The correct way to move your iphoto library to an external drive is to verify the drive is formatted Mac OS extended (journal) and then drag the iphotl library intact as a single entity to is
    The correct way to move some or all of your photos is to select them in iphoto and export 9file menu ==> export  --  https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-4921 ) to the external drive
    LN

  • Is it possible to transfer my iPhoto library to an external Hard Drive?

    I have noticed that my fairly new iMac computer's hard drive is almost completely full.
    Is it possible to transfer my iPhoto library to an external hard drive (that I have plugged constantly into my iMac computer), and still have full functionality of all parts of iPhoto e.g. Faces, etc.?

    Hey TD,
    After much reading in these posts and others you seem to be the guru on this topic. I recently bought a 1tb buffalo link station pro NAS (Network Attached Storage) drive that I copied my iphoto library to as described in previous post. I was then able to tell iphoto where the new library was, however when iphoto opens where the pic thumbnails should be are little dotted line boxes and when I scroll the mouse the pics then show up (instead of the dotted boxes) but then they slowly disappear back to dotted boxes. However if I double click on a dotted box the pic comes up normal in screen view.........any thoughts on why the dotted boxes and can't view the pics as thumbnails

  • How do I move my old iPhoto library from my external hard drive to my new Mac?

    Hi guys!
    I recently bought a new MacBook Air as my MacBook Pro was on its last legs... I have my backup for my old MacBook Pro on an external hard drive and I'm trying to put a selection of albums from my old iPhoto onto my new MacBook Air iPhoto. I can't simply click and drag it over as I get an error message "The iPhoto library is a Time Machine backup, and so cannot be used as the main library...". I've tried to reopen iPhoto while holding option and selecting my old iPhoto library from my external hard drive to open... AND I get the same message.
    If anyone could help me out that would be amazing!
    FYI: The hard drive I am using is a G|Drive mobile with Thunderbolt 1 TB.
    Thank you very much in advance!
    Cheers,
    Kendall

    I may sound like a real rookie here, but on my new MacBook Air there isn't a "Pictures" folder under "Users/kendallwilson" like there used to be on my old MacBook Pro (Early 2011). I'm still working out the new software on my MB Air, so where exactly should I open this new window to start following the steps you just provided me.
    Thanks again!

  • I have iPhoto 11 on my macbook. I want to export photos to another iPhoto library on an external hard drive. How can I do this.

    I have run out of space on my internal hard drive on my macbook and I want to create another iPhoto library on an external hard drive using most of the photographs already on the hard drive.
    I did this easily on an old G4 mac and an old version of iphoto. I simply imported the photographs from the library already on the hard drive to the new library I created on the external hard drive.
    It does not seem to be possible to do the same thing using iPhoto 11.
    I have no idea where to find the files on the mac to do it the more direct way by just importing the files.
    Any ideas?

    Here's one way to do what you want:
    1. Quit iPhoto.
    2. Copy the iPhoto Library from your Pictures Folder to the external drive.
    Now you have two full copies of the Library. To choose between them:  Hold down the option (or alt) key and launch iPhoto. From the resulting menu select 'Choose Library'
    3. On the Internal Library, remove the pics you don't want with you all the time.
    Now you have one full library on the external and another smaller sub-set on the Internal.
    A couple of comments:
    a. The external disk needs to be formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
    b: When you're removing the unwanted pics from the Internal Library you need to delete them in batches of about 100 or so. Trashing more at one time can cause problems with the database.
    c: Managing Multiple Libraries - including moving pics/albums/rolls and metadata between them - is greatly facilitated by using iPhoto Library Manager

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