Mac Move Photos Library To External Drive

09.04.2020
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Mac Move Photos Library To External Drive 5,0/5 569 votes

Your Photos library holds all your photos, albums, slideshows and print projects. If your library is large, and you want to free up storage space on your Mac, turn on iCloud Library and use Optimise Mac Storage, or move your photo library to an external drive.

Copy the Photos Library to the external drive. You can drag and drop. Wait while it copies over - this may take a while depending on the size of your library and the speed of the connection to the. Copy the Photos Library by dragging it from the startup volume to your external volume. (Your external volume has to be formatted as APFS or Mac OS Extended (Journaled): check first!) When. How do I move raw/jpeg combo files from Photos library in my mac to a Photos library in external hard-drive? I tried the power Photos too and still could not do it! Jan 29, 2020 In the Finder, go to the external drive where you want to store your library. In another Finder window, find your library. The default location is Users username Pictures, and it's named Photos Library. Drag your library to its new location on the external drive.

Before you start, make sure that you back up your library.

Prepare your drive

You can store your library on an external storage device, such as a USB or Thunderbolt drive formatted as APFS or Mac OS Extended (Journaled).1 Find out how to check the format of your external storage device.

To prevent data loss, Apple doesn't recommend storing photo libraries on external storage devices like SD cards and USB flash drives, or drives that are shared on a network.

Move your Photos library to an external storage device

Backup Apple Photos Library

Mac Move Photos Library To External DriveMac move photo library to external drive
  1. Quit Photos.
  2. In the Finder, go to the external drive where you want to store your library.
  3. In another Finder window, find your library. The default location is Users > [username] > Pictures, and it's named Photos Library.
  4. Drag your library to its new location on the external drive. If you see an error, select your external drive's icon in the Finder, then choose File > Get Info. If the information under Sharing & Permissions isn't visible, click , then make sure that the 'Ignore ownership on this volume' checkbox is selected. If it's not selected, click to unlock it, enter an administrator name and password, then select the checkbox.2

  5. After the move is finished, double-click Photos Library in its new location to open it.
  6. If you use iCloud Photo Library, designate this library as the System Photo Library.

Delete original library to save space

After you open your library from its new location and make sure that it works as expected, you can delete the library from its original location.

In a Finder window, go back to your Pictures folder (or whichever folder you copied your library from) and move Photos Library to the trash. Then choose Finder > Empty Trash to delete the library and reclaim disc space.

Open another Photos library

If you have multiple libraries, you can open a different one like this:

  1. Quit Photos.
  2. Press and hold the Option key while you open Photos.
  3. Select the library that you want to open, then click Choose Library.

Move Photos Library To External Drive Mac

Photos uses this library until you open a different one.

Learn more

Mac Move Photos Library To External Drive Yosemite

If you have a permissions issue with your library, you might be able to resolve the issue by using the Photos library repair tool.

1. You can't move your library to a disc that's used for Time Machine backups.

Moving Iphoto To External Drive

2. How to get into photos mac library. If the volume isn't formatted APFS or Mac OS Extended (Journaled), or has been used for Time Machine backups but hasn't been deleted, this checkbox will either not be present or won't be selectable after unlocking. Delete and reformat the drive for this option to be available.

Changing any single part of this folder without deep knowledge about Mac Operating System obviously causes unexpected troubles. The 2 ways to access and open Library folder in OS X – El Capitan, Yosemite or any other OS X versions? Look at 2 quick ways below: 1. How to find container folder in library el capitan mac pro. 2016-5-24  Just loaded El Capitan. There is no visible 'Library' showing, when I hold down t he Option key and from the Go menu in Finder. Also when I try to make it permanent ly visible, by doing Open Finder Command+Shift+H to access to Home Command + J Check at Show Library Folder. There is no 'Show Library Folder' box to check?