Copy Mac Library To External Hard Drive

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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 Photo Library and use Optimize Mac Storage, or move your library to an external drive.

Mar 18, 2020  Open the Movies folder, then drag the file named iMovie Library to your external hard drive. When the library file is finished copying to your external drive, double-click the library file on the external drive to open it in iMovie. If an alert appears asking you to give iMovie access to a removable volume, click OK.

Before you start, be sure to back up your library.

  1. Nov 20, 2016  In this video, I'll show you how to safely move your Photos library to an external hard disk and free up an amazing amount of space in the process.
  2. A final step in moving your pictures to an external drive is to make sure you have a good backup plan in place. If you are on a Mac and have your computer backed up via Time Machine, it will not automatically back up your external hard drives, and you might also find yourself quickly running out of space on your Time Machine backup drive.
  3. Nov 09, 2018  Make sure drive is formatted as MacOS Extended Journaled. Go to the location of the Photo library and move it to external drive. Set the external library as a System Photo Library (So whenever you open the Photos app it will open the photos library from the external hard drive.).
  4. Dec 11, 2018  Luckily, it’s easy enough to copy your Mac’s Photos library to an external drive. This guide assumes you’re using the actual “Photos” app on your Mac, the default if you’ve used iCloud Photo Stream or imported from your iPhone.
  5. Apr 09, 2020  An external hard drive is just a regular hard drive in a casing, so you can easily make your own by pairing Cable Matters’ Hard Drive Enclosure with the 2.5 inch hard drive or SSD of your choice.

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

  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 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.
MacCopy Mac Library To External Hard Drive

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 disk space.

Open another Photos library

If you have multiple libraries, here's how to open a different one:

  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.
Photos

How To Copy Mac Photo Library To External Drive

Photos uses this library until you open a different one.

Learn more

How To Copy Mac Photo Library To External Hard Drive

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 disk that's used for Time Machine backups.

Copy Hard Drive To Usb

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