I have Mavericks and I want to transfer my iPhoto library to an external drive

I have Mavericks and I want to transfer my iPhoto library to an external drive to free up a ton of space on my hard drive. Can't transfer the whole thing. It says part of it is being modified. When it started it said it would take 56 days also. Is there an easy way to transfer it? In older versions of iphoto It had a lot of folders in the pictures folder under users. I could transfer bit by bit each day if I wanted. Seems that there is only one gigantic iphoto Library now and I can't transfer the whole thing. Can you please help?

Hi Terence,
My OS version is Version 10.9 My iPhoto version is 9.5 (9027)
I was trying to bring it to my external drive that I use for placing random files (not a TimeMachine backup). It's a USB connection and it has a 2T storage capacity with plenty of room.
So I dragged it into the icon of the external drive and it "prepared" to transfer for a long time. Then at the end of that, it said it couldn't tramfer because part of it was being modified. (I can try it again to get the exact wording of this error message if you need it). Then I clicked ok, then there was a small window that looked like a small part of the iphoto library was transfered with the timeline there and the beginning portion blue with the rest of the line empty. At the right it said 56 days remaining. =) But that little window was frozen and wasn't doing anything. I tried it three times and it did the same thing each time exactly as I've described.
Thanks for your help!

Similar Messages

I want to copy my iPhoto library to an external drive but I cannot find the folder on my Mac Air. When I open Finder there is no Picture folder showing so I cannot find the iPhoto library.

I want to copy my iPhoto library to an external drive but I cannot find the folder on my Mac Air. When I open Finder there is no Picture folder showing so I cannot find the iPhoto library.

Choose Go to Folder from the Finder's Go menu and provide ~/Pictures/ as the path. If that doesn't work, control-click a photo in iPhoto, show it in the Finder, and Command-click the folder's name in the window's title bar to find the path.
(112151)

How can I transfer my iPhoto library safely to external drive?

How do I transfer pictures from iPhoto library to external hard drive without losing information? What hard drive would work best for this? I have no more space available on iMac hard drive.

Moving the iPhoto library is safe and simple - quit iPhoto and drag the iPhoto library intact as a single entity to the external drive - depress the option key and launch iPhoto using the "select library" option to point to the new location on the external drive - fully test it and then trash the old library on the internal drive (test one more time prior to emptying the trash)
And be sure that the External drive is formatted Mac OS extended (journaled) (iPhoto does not work with drives with other formats) and that it is always available prior to launching iPhoto
And backup soon and often - having your iPhoto library on an external drive is not a backup and if you are using Time Machine you need to check and be sure that TM is backing up your external drive
LN

Sorry folks, I did something bad, I was looking how to save my current iphoto library to my external drive and I hit a wrong button, lost my current iphoto and now have only the backed up version from 2007, Woops I never was the quick witted one... PLEASE

I switched my current iphoto library out for the saved one on my external drive by mistake. It said, Switch Libraries.... Do you want to switch the current iphoto library from AAA iphoto library (what I called the old one I guess - in my OWC) toOWC Mercury on-the-go and relaunch iphoto? cancel or relaunch
Sorry, I was looking for a way to save my current iphoto images to my hard drive. Yeah, I guess just drag something over right? Anyway, now I cannot retrieve my last 2 or 3 years of photos, Can You HELP me?
Mac os X version 10.6.8
2.66 GHz Intel core 2 Duo
etc

Depress the option key and launch iPhoto = use teh select library option and select the correct one
yes to move your library to an external drive
Moving the iPhoto library is safe and simple - quit iPhoto and drag the iPhoto library intact as a single entity to the external drive - depress the option key and launch iPhoto using the "select library" option to point to the new location on the external drive - fully test it and then trash the old library on the internal drive (test one more time prior to emptying the trash)
And be sure that the External drive is formatted Mac OS extended (journaled) (iPhoto does not work with drives with other formats) and that it is always available prior to launching iPhoto
And backup soon and often - having your iPhoto library on an external drive is not a backup and if you are using Time Machine you need to check and be sure that TM is backing up your external drive
LN

My MacBook Pro hard drive is almost full and I wish to store my Aperture Library on an external drive, how do I do this and is the use of USB2 suitable or do I need to use a Firewire external hard drive?

My MacBook Pro hard drive is almost full and I wish to store my Aperture Library on an external drive, how do I do this and is the use of USB2 suitable or do I need to use a Firewire external hard drive?

You'll get better performance if you use a Firewire hard drive (especially if you buy a 7200 RPM drive). Firewire's IO speed is significantly faster than USB 2. USB 2 has a theoretical max speed of 480 Mbps except that it has extremely high over-head. The fastest speeds you can typically get are about 300 Mbps. Firewire, on the other hand, has very little overhead. The fastest speeds you can get are very nearly 800 Mbps. You will typically be constrained by the maximum read/write speed of the drive, not the speed of the I/O on the Firewire bus. Now if you had one of those nice shiny new Macs with the Thunderbolt I/O and a Thunderbolt drive (Light Peak) ... I think they alter space and time so that your data arrives before you know you want it.
Also... unless you want to buy a solid state drive (very expensive), try to keep your hard drives from becoming much more than about 60% full if you want great performance. A nearly "full" hard drive is, on average, only about half as fast as the same hard drive when nearly empty.
USB 2 will work perfectly fine... just not as fast.
Also... it's much safer to move the entire Aperture library than to "relocate masters". Your images must be managed. You can Aperture manage them, or you can manage them. But someone has to manage them. If you "relocate" them so that they are no longer stored inside the Aperture library then you'll need to work out a system of how you decide to organize things and it's critically important that you don't start moving files around or deleting things without Aperture's knowledge. If you do, you'll break the links to your masters and start having problems with missing masters. If you have Aperture manage the library then you don't need to worry about any of that stuff.... it's safer.
Do make backups (use the Aperture Vault or use some other backup program, but make sure you back up your work if you care about it.) There are only two kinds of hard drives in the world: (1) those that have failed and (2) those that are going to fail. There are no exceptions to this rule. Hard drives are cheap. Backup software is built into Aperture and into your Mac.

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

Moved my iphoto library to an external drive and now I can't import photos from my camera or iPhone - will only import previously impoted photos - why?

Anyone else had this problem? Anyone know how to fix it?
I haven't deleted my photos of my computer's hard drive yet so can go back to using that if it will fix my problem
Thanks

No that is not a problem and no one has reported it here
to change the library depress the option key and launch iPhoto and use the select library command - see if the behavior is the same on both frives
How did you move the iPhoto library to the external drive?
What format is the external drive?
LN

HT201413 I keep getting error-36 when I try and transfer my iPhoto library to my hard drive. Can anyone help me please.

When I try and transfer my iphoto library from my computer to my harddrive, I keep getting error message "error-36". Can anyone help me please?

Odd, it seems. In the Finder "Get Info" display, you are seeing something like this?
Click the "Details" triangle and then the little padlock, and you should be able to change the permissions. Click the lock when you are done and close the Info window.

How do I transfer iPhoto library to an external drive?

How do I transfer my iPhoto library from my 2006 iMac to an external drive? My iMac is having issues and I don't want to loose all my photos.
Thanks!

Drag and drop the IPhoto Library file from your Pictures folder onto the new drive. It will copy by default. Before you delete the original, double-click the library in its new location and iPhoto will launch. Doing it this way tells iPhoto to use this library in future. Make sure it works correctly (and that you have a backup elsewhere, of course) before deleting the original.
Matt

HT4527 I have a new laptop/PC, and I want to keep content of iTunes on an external drive, how do I set this up?

I have a new laptop/pc, and I am trying to set up iTunes on it; but I want to keep content on an external drive (lots of movies/books/etc.). I know I will not be able to see when not hooked up to that drive, or sync with out it. What is the best way to go about setting this up.

Hi drnels,
Are you saying you still have access to the backup? If you do, you should take a look at [[Backing up your information]]. It will show you where all of your personal information is stored in Firefox and how you can copy it to a new install.
Hopefully this helps!

HT201250 i bought a new mac, and i want to migrate data from my old pc external drive to my mac how is this done

Just Recently bought a new Mac, because my old PC crashed again, ( finished w/ microsoft) but now i would like to migrate data from my external drive i used on my PC to my new Mac. i loaded the Migration assitant from utilities but didnt see how to migrate the data from this external drive. which is a SEgate drive. any ideas.

Just in case you are not aware of this, you can probably use your external drive, which you presumably now no longer need for your PC, as the backup drive using the Mac's Time Machine. If you still have any Windows specific files that you want to keep, it is really easy to partition the drive so that you can keep Windows files and Mac files in different partitions.

I have my iphoto library on an external drive, but it filled up. Can I have another library in another external drive and use them both?

I have old pictures in my external drive that I filled up. I would like to make another iphoto library in a new external drive and have this one for new pictures. Can I do that? And how will I be able to see my old pictures on my older external drive? My iphoto is 9.5.1.

Yes. Another way to switch between libraries is with this menu in iPhoto:

How do I transfer all my iPhoto library to an external drive without losing the organising

My iMac's internal drive is almost full - mainly with 25,000 photos accumulated over the last 10 years. These are carefully sorted into Events, Smart Albums, etc., and given titles, ratings, etc.
As my iMac is becoming rather 'clunky' with little space left, I want to transfer most or all of my iPhoto library onto a newly purchased 1TB external hard drive to be used just for photos / movies.
I already have another external hard drive linked to Time Machine backing up everything on the iMac.
I followed Apple's support team's instruction to create iPhoto on the new external hard drive (My Passport) - and then drag and drop the existing iPhoto library onto it from the Master file.
It's successfully copied all 25,000 photos into the new iPhoto library on My Passport, but I'm dismayed to find that all the original events, titles, etc. are now all shuffled up and haphazard, with all titles, grading, etc. apparently gone.
Fortunately I haven't yet started to delete the photos on the original Iphoto library on my internal hard drive .................. but surely there's a way to 'back up' my iPhoto library without losing all the hard work I've put into the organising & editing ............isn't there ???
What am I doing wrong?

I followed Apple's support team's instruction to create iPhoto on the new external hard drive (My Passport) - and then drag and drop the existing iPhoto library onto it from the Master file.
Don't know who told you that but it would be difficult to be more wrong.
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.
3. Hold down the option (or alt) key while launching iPhoto. From the resulting menu select 'Choose Library' and navigate to the new location. From that point on this will be the default location of your library.
4. Test the library and when you're sure all is well, trash the one on your internal HD to free up space.
Regards
TD

How do I transfer my iTunes library from an external drive to my new macbook air?

I have an 8 year old MacBook Pro that has a small hard drive. So 8 years ago I put all my songs (35GB) on an external drive. I just bought a MacBook Air that has 256 GB of space and would like to transfer all my songs, movies, etc. to it and stop using the old hard drive. Can anyone help me with how to do this? Thanks.

Choose Go to Folder from the Finder's Go menu, provide ~/Music/ as the folder's path, and drag the entire iTunes library, including the database files, to it.
Alternatively, you can drag the entire library to any location on the internal drive, launch iTunes with the Option key held down, and choose it.
If you only put the songs and not the database files on the external drive, drag it to the internal drive and from there to the library in the open iTunes application window.
(114452)

How do I transfer my iPhoto library to two separate drives using Aperture

Hi, I'm using iPhoto 9.4.2. My photo library is taking up most of my Macbook Pro's hard drive space so I bought Aperture 3.4.3 after reading the following description:
"As your iPhoto library grows, it may become too big to store on your computer’s hard drive. Aperture lets you set up as many external drives as you want and specify where to store each of your photos."
I want to put most of my photos on an external drive and only the most recent photos on my Mac's hard drive. I can't figure out exactly how to do this, though.
Hopefully someone can provide simple instructions. Thanks!

"As your iPhoto library grows, it may become too big to store on your computer’s hard drive. Aperture lets you set up as many external drives as you want and specify where to store each of your photos."
This is referring to turning your Aperture/iPhoto library into a referenced library. Aperture lets you relocate the original image files to a folder outside your photolibrary (this folder may be on external drive) and reference the originals in this location. This way the library itself will be smaller, but if you want to edit or export the referenced images, you need to make sure the external drive is mounted.
Relocating original files is simple: Just select the images you want to relocate in the browser and use the command "File > relocate original file(s)". But after relocating you are responsible for protecting the originals. Do not move, renmae, or edit them in any way. Make sure you have a working backup of your library before you start restructering it.
See this part of the manual for more help: Aperture 3 User Manual: Working with Referenced Images
Just in case Aperture should lose the connection to some referenced originals (this can happen sometimes, if the you need to restore your harddrive) use the command "File > Locate referenced files" to reconnect them.
Regards
Léonie

I have Mavericks and I want to transfer my iPhoto library to an external drive

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for