Moved photo library to external, space on internal drive did not change.

At the end of each year I like to move the current iPhoto library to an external hard drive to save space. The library get retitled Library 2007, Library 2008, etc.
I do this to save space on my hard drive. My trusty iMac has only 80 gig hd (but that was a lot a few years ago). I was down to 11 plus gigs of free space.
So, I moved over 4000 photos to the external hard drive, using the directions posted on this forum about using the pictures folder and the library in it, then deleting old photos. OK, so all my pictures from 2008 are on the external. I kept only 72 pictures on the internal hd (had to reimport them after the big move). This only freed about 4G of hd space, and if I do “Get info” or use Whatsize, it shows my iPhoto as using 9.7G of space. 9G of space for 72 photos??? Can’t be. If I select my old Library 2008 with 4000 plus photos it also says the size is 9.7
I know I have the right Library chosen when I start iPhoto with option key held down.
What have I done or failed to do???
I tried shutting down and restarting. Have repaired permissions once, though not from original disk.
This has been hard to explain, I hope I made it understandable.
Thanks in advance for all help.
Jane

Hi Terence,
I feel like the world's biggest dummy right now. Remember when I told you that yes, I had emptied the trash? Well, the trash I emptied was on the desktop. I very wrongly assumed that when I selected and deleted photos, all trash was the same. But apparently not. The trash in the iPhoto program was filled with images. When I discovered this an emptied it, I freed up a lot of hd space.
So, your first suggestion was right, I was just too dumb to know which trash needed emptying.
Thank you so much for your help and your patience as well.
Jane

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Moving photo library to external drive

Hi,
My Mac hard drive is really getting full, i've only got 10GB left!
I've bought myself a 1TB external USB hard drive, and would like to move my large iPhoto Library onto it.
If I move it across, and then create a fresh new iPhoto Library on my Mac Hard drive will I still be able to access my old photos on my external drive?
Also will it affect syncing through iTunes, and/or syncing with my iCloud photo stream?
Lastly, can you think of any other things that are generally ok to dump on an external drive and start afresh? I'd like to move my Steam Games, but still access them through the external drive,   what do you think?
Thanks for all your help!

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.
Why would you create a second library on the internal idk? Just use the one on the external.
It makes no difference to syncing.
Regards
TD

Photos library in External Disc

Hi there. I don’t have enough space so my iPhoto library is in my external disc. I have trouble importing to photos. I think it is because of the space issue. So my question is can I set up my photo library in external disc. Need help?
Put simply, how do I migrate from iPhoto external to Photos external?

If you have an iPhoto Library folder on the external drive, hold down the Option key while you start iPhoto. Keep holding it until you're prompted to find your library or create a new one. Navigate to the iPhoto Library folder on the external drive and select it.
You might as well trash the empty library in the Pictures folder inside your user account folder on the internal drive. That's the default location for an iPhoto Library folder. If there's none in there, and iPhoto loses track of what other library folder you'd like it to open, it may create another new library in there.
You can't upgrade beyond iPhoto 2.0.1 without buying some version of the iLife suite. The current version is 6.

Couldn't start Photos app with a photo library in external hard drive

"Photos was unable to make a copy of your library before preparing it. Photos does not have the necessary permissions..."
The pop-up menu allow me to read some solution in this site (If Photos can’t copy or create a library - Apple Support), but it only contains with default location in the picture folder. I've been using my photo library in external driver which I made as one for timemachine, and the terminal solution didn't work for me('couldn't find location' after entering passwords). Please help.

"Photos was unable to make a copy of your library before preparing it. Photos does not have the necessary permissions..."
The pop-up menu allow me to read some solution in this site (If Photos can’t copy or create a library - Apple Support), but it only contains with default location in the picture folder. I've been using my photo library in external driver which I made as one for timemachine, and the terminal solution didn't work for me('couldn't find location' after entering passwords). Please help.

You can't open photo library using this version of iphoto. you have made changes to your photo library using a newer version of iphoto. please quit and use the latest version of iphoto

you can't open photo library using this version of iphoto. you have made changes to your photo library using a newer version of iphoto. please quit and use latest version of iphoto. iphoto 11 is installed.

This is a message you got?
If so, as your post isn't clear, it may be a bogus message caused by a corrupt database.
Option 1
Back Up and try rebuild the library: hold down the command and option (or alt) keys while launching iPhoto. Use the resulting dialogue to rebuild. Choose to Rebuild iPhoto Library Database from automatic backup.
If that fails:
Option 2
Download iPhoto Library Manager and use its rebuild function. This will create a new library based on data in the albumdata.xml file. Not everything will be brought over - no slideshows, books or calendars, for instance - but it should get all your albums and keywords back.
Because this process creates an entirely new library and leaves your old one untouched, it is non-destructive, and if you're not happy with the results you can simply return to your old one. .
Regards
TD

Why last modified of photos library did not change?

I have turned on iCloud Photo Library and have chosen to keep original in my Mac which I pointed it to a portable USB hard drive. Then I back it up using time machine. But the last modified of the photos library (checked using finder) did not changed even I kept uploading new photos. Why is that? In such case how can I ensure all the photos are back up by time machine?

Is there something special about the file formats? iCloud Photo Library supports:
JPEG, RAW, PNG, GIF, TIFF, and MP4.
And no JPEG must be larger than 16GB.
The photos will not upload, if the original image file is missing. Can you edit or export the photos, that did not upload?

My iPhone 5S is using 2.5GBs of storage for the camera roll. I deleted all but 190 photos and this did not change. My other devices cannot backup to iCloud due to the volume on my iPhone. Any ideas?

My iPhone 5S is using 2.5GBs of storage for the camera roll. I deleted all but 190 photos and this did not change. My other devices cannot backup to iCloud due to the volume on my iPhone. Any ideas?

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GB

Had to have my hard drive rebuilt in my PC (not Mac). When I reinstalled my music library from iTunes, several of the songs did not download properly - they appear in light colored ink on my library list but the songs will not play and will not synch

Had to have my hard drive rebuilt in my PC (not a Mac). When I reinstalled my music library from itunes, some of the songs did not properly download. They appear in light colored ink, but will not play and will not synch with my iPod. How can I get all of my songs back?

If your country's iTunes Store allows you to redownload purchased tracks, I'd delete your current copies of the dodgy tracks and try redownloading fresh copies. For instructions, see the following document:
Downloading past purchases from the App Store, iBookstore, and iTunes Store
Otherwise, I'd report the problem to the iTunes Store.
Log in to the Store. Click on "Account" in your Quick Links. When you're in your Account information screen, go down to Purchase History and click "See all".
Find the items that are not playing properly. If you can't see "Report a Problem" next to the items, click the "Report a problem" button. Now click the "Report a Problem" links next to the items.

How do I move ITunes Library to External with only 5GB of space on Internal Drive without getting Space issue message when Consolidate library option is executed?

Details:
250 GB Internal Hard Drive
50 GB iTunes Library
1 TB External Drive w/ 153 GB of Open Space that is Partioned
Steps followed:
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1449
I get Stuck on Step 11 Consolidate Files to new external drive location with Error message: Not enough space to move files.
This makes no sense Apple. The purpose in doing this is to free up space on my internal drive?
Any help would be much appreciated as I'm stuck and can't seem to resolve or find any suggestions to resolve...

Don't use that method. It does move the whole library, it just moves the media. The whole library is best left intact.
iTunes: How to move [or copy] your music to a new computer [or another drive] - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4527
Quick answer if you use iTunes' default preferences settings: Copy the entire iTunes folder (and in doing so all its subfolders and files) intact to the other drive. Open iTunes and immediately hold down the Option (alt) key (shift on Windows), then guide it to the new location of the library.

Moving iTunes Library to external HD--song could not be used

I wanted to move my iTunes library to an external HD, because my internal drive was running out of space. I looked around on here and found directions how to move my iTunes Library to an external hard drive. I followed those directions, and everything seemed copacetic the first time I started iTunes after the move and pointed it at the moved library. Songs played and everything was great.
But tall subsequent times I've started iTunes, I get the dreaded "song could not be used because the original file could not be found" message for every song I've tried.
I looked around on the discussion boards here some more, and seem to be seeing that there is no general solution. There's no good way to tell iTunes, "Go match up all the lines in the iTunes database with all the song titles in such-and-such a location."
I also read the article about "What are the iTunes Library files." I see that there are 2 basic files. One is a database file called "iTunes Library," and the second is a text file called "iTunes Library.xml." I opened up the XML file and looked around a bit. Here is what I find:
Every song in the XML file seems to be referred to with a relative path, such as: <string>file://localhost/Users/rodney/Music/iTunes/iTunes%20Music/Krys%20Mach,%20Jo%20Az usa,%20Jerome%20Mokar/Native%20Spirit/01%20Cave%20Dweller.m4a</string>
The thing is, that's not the right path, unless localhost happens to be pointed at my external HD, which I don't know why it would be.
I suspect that this is the exact same problem inside the database file, too.
I'm looking around for a definition of localhost... the only thing I'm finding is in /etc/hosts, which looks like:
127.0.0.1 localhost
255.255.255.255 broadcasthost
::1 localhost
I think it's odd that localhost is in there twice, but maybe that's normal.
Anyway, enough rambling, the basic question is, how can I tell iTunes that my files are on my external HD instead of wherever it thinks they are on "localhost," which I'm sure somehow resolves back to being my internal HD. Can I do some tricky grep-ing through the database file and strategically replace all occurrences? Or is that just asking for trouble?
Thanks!
Rodney

I don't know if this is at all useful to other people having similar problems, but I did get all my songs back more or less, and this is how:
1) With iTunes shut down, I went into my iTunes directory (ExternalHD/Users/rodney/Music/iTune), and moved my "iTunes Library" and "iTunes Library.xml" files to someplace else.
2) I started iTunes while holding down the Option key.
3) When iTunes popped the "Quit / Create New Library / Choose Library" dialog, I selected "Create New". I chose the path back to where my original iTunes Library used to live and where my music is; ExternalHD/Users/rodney/Music/iTunes.
4) iTunes started up with a completely blank library. I went and looked in the above directory, and yes, there was now a very small "iTunes Library" file there.
5) Under the File menu in iTunes, I chose "Add to Library". I then navigated to the location of all my music, which was ExternalHD/Users/rodney/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music.
6) When I selected this folder, iTunes started going through a bunch of gyrations of scanning, organizing, adding... I don't know what all it thought it was doing, but it finished 24 GB of music in about 3 minutes.
And now my music is all playable again! Of course, all my playlists are toast... completely gone, since they were in the old library.
The thing I notice is that iTunes moved all the artist folders... For instance, my album by the group Baka used to be in "ExternalHD/Users/rodney/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/Baka" with previous versions of iTunes, but now iTunes 8 seems to want to flatten that out and it moved that directory to reside at "ExternalHD/Users/rodney/Music/iTunes/Baka". So, while it works, it looks messy. I liked it better when all the artist folders were down a level in the directory /iTunes Music/. Then the only things in the iTunes folder were the database files, a few other files iTunes has created over the years, and the iTunes Music folder.
But whatever... at least I don't have to add thousands of songs back into iTunes manually.
Just as a side note, I took a clue from the directory flattening out, and I tried one other thing: I put all the artist folders back down in the /iTunes Music/ folder, and I moved my original "iTunes Library" files down into that folder too. Then on startup, I tried pointing iTunes at the original library which was now down one level. But that didn't help... the individual song paths in that database are apparently still pointing onto my internal HD.
Rodney

Move photo library to external drive

I would like to move my Photo library from my internal HD to an external HD. Does anyone know the correct way to do this without losing any data?Is this done by an export of all photos (which I tried but it hung up for two days with no progress after making it mostly through). Will dragging and dropping the Photo Library work (I am scared to try this.) Thanks!

Make sure the drive is formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
1. Quit Photos
2. Copy the Photos Library from your Pictures Folder to the External Disk.
3. Hold down the option (or alt) key while launching Photos. 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

Saving Photos library on external drive?

I have been storing my iPhoto library on an external drive and opening iPhoto from that drive. How can I do the same thing for the new Photos app? I have so many pictures and I don't want to use up storage space on my computer or pay for tons of storage in iCloud.
Is there a way to import my iPhoto library into Photos on my computer (which already has some photos in it) and then move the entire new library to the external drive?

Is there a way to import my iPhoto library into Photos on my computer (which already has some photos in it) and then move the entire new library to the external drive?
You cannot merge Photos libraries. Importing an additional library into your current library is not supported in Photos. You can only migrate the iPhoto library as a second library and then switch between the libraries.
If you open an iPhoto Library in Photos, the Photos.app will create a migrated Photos library on the same drive where the original library is. So, before you open any iPhoto Library in Photos, make sure, it is on the drive, where you want the migrated library to be. To open any library in Photos you can drag the library onto the Photos icon.

Moving photos to an external drive from iPhoto

I'm exporting from macback pro iphoto library to an external drive (passport for mac) and getting message unable to create/volumes/My Passport for Mac. I use this drive as my back up drive for the macbook. Does this mean I need to get a new drive or just that the passport is too full (1Tetrabyte)

to move the iPhoto library you need to move it as a single entity -
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
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LN

Sync problems since moving iTunes library to external HD

My wife's MacBook Pro is the syncing computer for our house. Since she moved her library to an external drive we have had to start all over. iTunes is current. In preferences the library is mapped correctly to where it resides on the external drive. The sync begins and then almost immediately stops with an error message that the file type (music and TV shows total of 100 errors) is not supported by this Apple TV. The Apple TV has been reauthorized in iTunes Store. I am as I write this syncing the photos, but since they are in iPhoto, that seems to work fine. I disabled the syncing of music for this sync until I get this figured out. The cover art for all the movies and TV shows is not available. All of this content synced fine before the change to the external drive. I suspect that once the photos are done syncing the TV shows and movies won't sync because the above mentioned error messages will prevent this from happening.
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CD3

Hi Winston,
After 4 hours of futzing around and finally fixing, I found my answer on the iTunes forum. Simply mapping the external drive which now has the content to iTunes, is not enough. All that does is tell iTunes where to put new purchases. The library list is there, but when trying to play or sync anything, there is an alert exclamation mark. When you click on that it tells you that the song can't be found and asks would you like to find it. I knew something was wrong when none of the cover art was available. So I did a test and "found" 2 missing songs, and 2 TV shows. The exclamation mark then disappeared next to each, the songs played, and I tried to sync just the aforementioned content, and that worked perfectly.
So now I'm faced (since I didn't know how to do this, and frankly still don't have the easy answer) with "finding" every single piece of content manually. Yikes!. So I found on the iTunes forum the "add to library" command and everything shows up fine and plays fine except that I now have duplicates of everything. One each of the exclamation point and one of the real content. LOTS! 1000 plus songs, 2 dozen movies 100 plus TV shows, audio books, podcasts.
Here is where I don't know the easy solution, which you may know for future reference, once you've "added to library. What I ended up doing was deleting all the exclamtion points one by one. That part alone took and hour and a half of near midnight, very tired, bleary eyes. The good thing was if you happen to accidentally try to delete the real content as you go down the list you get a warning. I checked the trash when I was done, so nothing was accidentally deleted.
The sync took quite a long time, about 9 hours, because there is alot of video content, but it's all on the TV now. Everything! Phew!
Do you know of an easier way to do this when you put your library on an external drive? Or should this question be posted on the iTunes forum. I may do that anyway.
Many thanks for your help.
CD3

Moved my library to external hard drive...now nothing will play!

I just moved my library to an external hard drive, and now I can't play anything. ITunes says it can't locate the original file, and asks to locate it individually. Any thoughts on how to get ITunes to recognize my new drive as the location where all the files are?

Delete the existing entries in iTunes and drag the folder with the music into the open iTunes window.
(36219)

Moved photo library to external, space on internal drive did not change.

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