Copy Mac Photos Library To External Hard Drive

Copy Photos To E Drive
Export Pictures To External Drive
Copy Mac Photos Library To External Hard Drive Windows 10
Copy Mac Photos Library To External Drive
Copy Apple Photos To External Drive
Download Pictures To External Drive

Select version:

If you want to free up precious space on your Mac computer, then you can move your Mac's iPhoto Library on to an external hard drive. You can also move iPhoto Library to cloud storage service such as Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, iCloud Drive, Box and more. Jan 23, 2017 This is a tutorial on how to copy all photos from Apple's new Photos App (2017) to a hard drive. Including iCloud. APPLE PHOTOS LIBRARY TO EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE. Nov 23, 2016 Moving a Mac’s Photos Library. How can I copy them to an external drive without messing up the Photos app? Navigate to the external hard drive that now houses your library file, select. As long as the external hard drive is connected, Photos will reference the library on the external drive instead of your Mac. Now quit Photos and eject the external hard drive. Open a new Finder window and navigate to the Pictures folder in the left sidebar again. Select the Photos file and move it to the Trash. How to move an Apple Photos for OS X library to an external drive A reader would like to host his Photos Library on a drive other than the startup volume. Apr 04, 2020 Right click on the Photos library icon and select Get Info. Verify that you have enough free space for the library on the external drive. Drag and drop the Photos library icon onto the hard drive icon either in Finder or on your Desktop. Wait for the copy to complete. The elapsed time will vary based on the size of your library.

Modifying this control will update this page automatically

Photos User Guide

Even if you use iCloud Photos, it’s important that you always back up your library locally using one of the following methods:

Use Time Machine: After you set up Time Machine, it automatically backs up the files on your Mac. If you ever lose the files in your Photos library, you can restore them from the Time Machine backup. For more information about setting up Time Machine, see Back up your files with Time Machine.
WARNING: If a Photos library is located on an external drive, don’t use Time Machine to store a backup on that external drive. The permissions for your Photos library may conflict with those for the Time Machine backup.
Manually copy your library to an external storage device: Drag the Photos library (by default in the Pictures folder on your Mac) to your storage device to create a copy.

If you have more than one photo library, be sure to back them all up.

Important: If any of your image files are stored outside your photo library, those files (known as referenced files) aren’t backed up when you back up your library. Be sure to back up those files separately. To make it easier to back up all your image files at once, you can consolidate referenced files into your library. See Change where Photos stores your files.

See alsoCreate additional photo libraries in Photos on MacRepair your library in Photos on Mac

Free up your space by transferring your Photos library to another external hard drive. By freeing up space you will have valuable space for your work on your Mac. Mac ads cleaner in library windows 10. In addition to this, we will help you to back up your whole photo library to iCloud.

Mar 03, 2020 iCloud Photos works with the Photos app to keep your photos and videos securely stored in iCloud, and up to date on your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac, Apple TV, and iCloud.com. How it works iCloud Photos automatically keeps every photo and video you take in iCloud, so you can access your library from any device, anytime you want. Jan 05, 2020 If you want your Mac's photos to wirelessly sync to all your other iOS devices and computers, you want to set up iCloud Photo Library: Apple's photo sync service lets you back up your images on all your devices, as well as access them — online or offline — on said devices.If you're willing to pay for the extra iCloud storage space, you can store an incredible amount of photos and videos. Apr 01, 2020 Designate a System Photo Library in Photos If you have multiple photo libraries on your Mac, you can choose one to be the System Photo Library. The System Photo Library is the only library that can be used with iCloud Photos, Shared Albums, and My Photo Stream. Add photos to icloud photo library from mac.

Why store photos on external drive

In today’s world, everyone loves to capture photos of every single moment and wants to save all those moments in his/her personal devices like Mac. But saving all your photos can fill-up your Mac storage quickly and you may face the shortage of space.

There are many options to store your photos data. One of them to store your photos on iCloud photo library but the drawback of saving your photos on iCloud is, if you delete the photo from your device it will be deleted from iCloud as well.

One question raised up here is that what we can do to store all our photos to some safe place if we are running out of space on Mac?

Fortunately, you have visited the right place to find the solution to your problem. There is a safer and easy way to transfer your entire photo library from your Mac to your external drive. The best of this trick is whenever you need to see your photos on your Mac you just need to open photo library app on your Mac it will automatically take you to your saved photos in external hard drive until unless it is plugged in.

Snapshot of the guide

Copy Photos To E Drive

There is a quick snapshot of the guide so you can understand quickly how to move the library to external drive.

Prepare your external hard drive to move Photo Library. 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.)
After completing trasfer to drive, make sure this external drive is connected to your Mac whenever you want to access photos.

Our article will help you to move your photos from Mac to external hard drive. Continue reading the steps are about to start.

Do not worry if you have already stored your photos on iCloud photo library. Our article will help you to get back your already saved photos in iCloud photos library and will help you to move them to external hard drive. Here is how to do it.

System Photo Library vs Other Library

Export Pictures To External Drive

When you run Photos app on your Mac first time this will ask you to create a new or use an old library. That default Photo library became the system library automatically. Only System Photo Library are allowed to access iCloud services.

You can create multiple other libraries and work with photos only in one library at a time. To work in another library you have to switch the library. You can also change and set one of the other libraries as a System library.

How to transfer the Photos library to a hard drive

First, make it sure the hard drive you are going to use for Photos library is faster and have enough space. It will save your time and stored your memories quickly. A good hard drive always keeps your stuff secure and there are fewer chances of losing your data.

Before going step by step to move your photo library to external hard, first make it sure that your external hard drive is already formatted for Mac OS Extended (journaled). If it is not formatted for Mac first erase all the data from it and format and choose the option of Mac OS Extended (journaled). Use the Disk Utility on your Mac to erase any hard drive (When you erase any drive in mac everything will be deleted, so please save any important data ).

Find the Photos Library on your Mac, it will be in your Pictures folder. Click the Go menu on the top and then select Home option from the menu.
Open the Pictures folder and there you will find the Photos library.
TIP: In order to see how much storage your photos have taken, just Ctrl+Click on the photos library icon and click on Get Info. Now you can make sure that you have enough storage in your external hard drive.
It’s time to copy your Photos Library to your external hard drive using drag and drop trick. Now sit back and wait until copies over. The time of transferring photos depends on the size of your Photo Library.
When transferred completed, press and hold the Option/Alt key from keyboard and click the Photos app icon from Dock to open it. Keep holding the keyboard key until you see a window otherwise this will open the Photos app.
You will see a new window to choose the library. On that window hit the button Other library. Navigate to the new location on your external hard drive and choose the Photo Library.
If there is a message that shows “there are some items that need to be downloaded from iCloud Photo library” then you need to click on delete incomplete items and download all those incomplete items.
Set a photo library as System Photo Library
We have already moved the library to an external drive now its time to set it as System Photo Library. Doing that will allow it to use iCloud service.
Open the Photo Library from the external drive.
Click Photos men and then select the Preferences option.
On the next window click General and then click Use as System Photo Library button (this will help you to get it to work with iCloud Photo Library)
TIP: Remember this is the step you need to perform in future If you accidentally unlinked the external drive’s photo library from the Photos app.
Go to System Preferences then iCloud then Photos then Options, and choose iCloud Photo Library to turn that back on. See if you have stored all the photos here.

Note: you will need to plug in your external hard drive in order to see your photos).

Delete Photo Library from Mac

Once you have confirmed that all the photos in the library moved to the external drive. You can delete the Photo Library from your Mac computer. Go to the Pictures folder and delete it to free up space from your mac.