Storing images on external hard drive but using iPhoto

Hi
I am a new apple user so I'm trying to figure out how to use iPhoto. I think it's a great way to organize my photos but I've run into the problem of my hard drive getting to small for my images so I wan't to put all of my images on an external hard drive to free space on my MacBook. Can I do that and still use iPhoto to tag people and organize my pictures? Will I always have to have the hard drive connected to be able to use iPhoto or does it "cache" the images so that I can organize them but not view the full pictures?
(My iPhoto is called iPhoto '09 version 8.1.2)
Would very much appreciate a little guidance! ;-)
Angelica

Yes you can do this.
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.
This means that you will always have to have the disk connected to view the pics.
You can also do it differently, where the Library is stored on the Mac and the Photos are on the external.
But...
I very strongly recommend that you do not do this. See this thread here for more on that
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3062728?tstart=0
Regards
TD

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Storing images on external hard drive but using iPhoto

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