Mac Photos Library On External Hard Drive

24-05-2021
 |  [RAND-100] - Comments

I have looked at a ton of posts on this site and others and find similar problems but cant figure out what is wrong. If someone could point me in the right direction that would be great. I have an Imac 2.4ghz intel core 2 duo 3 gigs of ram. I have an Iphoto library that is 190gigs . I have been trying to transfer the library to an external 1 tb hard drive so I can get my computer to run normal again. When I try and transfer the Iphoto library to the external I get a really lame error code. The transfer will start perfect it will get to about 142 gigs complete then the message :'the finder cannot complete the operation because some data in 'iphoto library' could not be read or written. (error code -36). I have looked up the error code and it seems to be one of those codes that doesn't really tell you anything. At first I thought it was a problem with the external, maybe it was not formatted correctly. Then I tried with an alternate drive I had and the same thing. Just to make sure I took back the original drive. Re formatted the drive only one partition, and mac os extended journaled using GUID partition as suggested by many posts. So I don't believe it is the drive at all I can transfer other files no problem. I have not tried to transfer something as large, but everything else, photos, movies, ect seem to be no problem at all. I really do think now there is something wrong with the library but I don't know what to do. I would love to try and make a copy on the computer itself, but there is not enough room. I think I may need to rebuild the Iphoto library but do not want to lose everything. Any suggestions? Any help would be appreciated.

Mac Photos Library On External Drive

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.

Photos

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

Mac

How to transfer your iPhone or Mac Photo library to an external drive. By AppleInsider Staff Wednesday, January 31, 2018, 04:40 pm PT (07:40 pm ET) Storing an entire collection of photographs in. 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. How to back up your iCloud Photo Library. Open Photos on your Mac. Click Photos Preferences. Click on the iCloud tab. Choose Download originals to this Mac.

Mac Photos Library On External Hard Drive

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

Mac Photos Library On External Hard Drive Software Download

  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.

Copy Apple Photos To External Drive

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.

Photos uses this library until you open a different one.

Learn more

Mac Photos Library On External Hard Drive 500 Gb

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

Mac Photo Library On External Hard Drive

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

Mac Photos Library On External Hard Drive 10 Tb

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 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.