How to move Photos Library to External Hard Drive on Mac
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- Опубліковано 29 чер 2021
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This guide goes through the steps on how to relocate your Mac's Photos library over to an external USB Hard Drive. You'll need a Hard Drive that is large enough to store your Photos library.
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Great Emillio! Thank you for all your hard work. Will dive in again I'm sure!
Emilio, this is very well presented. Concise and clear.
I followed your instructions and everything worked out fine. However, when I open Photos-settings- general there is a message that says it is not searchable in Spotlight due to its location... and goes on to say all the things you cannot do from the hard drive. Especially when it comes to sharing photos and collaborating with others. This would lead me to believe that any photos i want to share or perform other functions with I would have to copy them back to my macbook and reregister the primary location. i don't know for sure. I'm brand new to Macbooks after 40+ years on the PC system. Just trying to get my pictures on my 1TB SSD. Ameteur Photographer/Videographer so need lots of space (and 1TB doesn't cut it). thanks for the video and any feedback you can provide.
Not helpful. When I open my finder, I don't have anything called "Pictures" on the left hand column....so I'm already stuck at the very beginning. Would be great to know how to get Pictures to show up in Finder like you had it.
how do I reverse this???? please someone help me - i followed the video and the library is now on an external memory drive - but I want to reverse it and just have my library back to open from my MacBook. can someone help me please
Okay, am I the only one wondering why Mac would make something so simple, a task worthy of a 9 minute video?
Recently switched from PC to Mac and I find this so unnecessarily crude
Same here, I'm switching to my PC to finish the job.
to be fair, the first 2 minutes was a bunch of useless information
Because these people making videos enjoy hearing themselves talk and best to speak to your dumbest possible viewer.
Because the harder the process, the more people buy iCloud Storage.
Thank you SO much for this!! Easy to understand, love the walk throughs ☺️
This was the best process guide ever! Zero frustration. 100% success. Yay to free space! THANK YIU!
Thank you for the simplicity. I’ve watched several videos and this was the easiest to understand! I can finally get rid of my storage nightmare!
SAME!!!
Some videos are too long, some are not detailed enough. You made it easy from start to finish. I had no problems following each step as you explain the reasons for the process. Thank you!
With this method does your photos open on another pc other then mac?
Very easy to follow & informative! Before doing this though, if I transfer all my pictures to the external hard drive, what happens to all the Smart Folders & iPhoto Events I created to organize them? I also have some Project folders in the works... Do I lose all this? Or will it keep these in tact... Thanks!
just got a new iMac, So I've been looking at tutorials all evening for hours. But your tutorial was by far the best one for me. The details your gave were put in the best way for me to understand. Thank you. I will check our your others videos and maybe your classes if they are applicable. Awesome video thanks :)
Any advice on Live Photo’s? Basically when moved to a flash drive it splits the file into a still photo and a mov file.
Perfect execution on explaining everything I needed to do! Thank you so much!
Thank you for making this video and a well explained process! Question - once your Photos library lives on the external drive, can you still turn on iCloud photos?
Great job leading me thru the process! Really appreciate your skills.
Thanks Emilio, this was very clear and helpful. I transferred to ext HDD. When I went to change preferences to choose other library, I clicked on my ext HDD but can not get the OPEN button to work?
and when you add new photos in your mac and want to backup again, you have to have separate libraries or can you add the new photos to the library that is already in your external hard drive?
Hey Emilio, just wondering if I were to do this again (ex: save another Photo library for photos next year), would I save a new updated Photos library to my external hard drive and have to reroute the Photos app again to open a new Photo folder on my external drive? So if I have multiple photo libraries, would I have to reroute each time I want to view the libraries?
Before I do the transfer of my photos library onto the USB flash drive, I want to know if once I copied my photos library and delete the original Photos Library and emptied from the Trash bin, would I be able to add new photos to my Macbook pro again? will the photos icon be there? Thanks.
Thank you for the video Emilio. Will this sync with cloud for the photos library so that all my apple devices are updated with the latest photo updates?
Hi there! I'm planning to do this for my photos because I really like organizing using the Photos app. Once I connect the library to my hard drive, if I make an album to organize the photos from the library, are those albums stored in the hard drive as well?
Can I use my external SD Card Reader to open pictures or should I use the SD Card Reader on the back of my iMac?
got a question, now I managed successfully to do what you very efficiently explained, but now if I have more pictures to upload from my phone how to proceed? thanks francois
Thanks for the video. Can I still use iCloud given the photo library is external HD?
GREAT!! So now I have a question. As I take more photos on my iPhone and eventually I import that into my photos app on my Mac... how do I ensure it goes into this location on my external harddrive and not just back into my photos on my Mac? Will it do it automatically? Thanks!
Very useful. Can you rename or date the file for another time? Thanks
This tutorial on copy photo library to external hard drive (SSD) is the best explanation I have viewed. I notated your site to Apple on the just completed survey. Thank you again (and I would have saved 3 months work had I viewed your site back in January). Thank you... I am a New Subscriber.
I have a big photo and Video library im currently storing on my 4TB harddrives I would be happy to buy a huge Harddrive to cater for all my stuff which harddrive would you recommend?
Why when you export your picture library to the seagate external hard drive are the pictures not in the same order as the photos library on your mac etc and the original date that you took the photos does not show, it shows the date of creation which seems to mean the date that you imported them to the device not the actual date you took the picture.
A video on this would be very helpful.
Helped me soo much i been trying figure how to transfer to my hard drive for months THANK YOU 🙏🏾
I appreciate this video so much. As a new UA-camr with a new camera, I was putting all my photos on my computer now my computer school and my iPhone storage is full and it’s just been a mess. I appreciate this video so much.
Thank you for putting together this video. I was able to move my Photo library to an external SSD and everything works well. The only issue is that I downloaded all my photos from my iPhone and now I want to move a few back to my iPhone 13 Pro Max. Unfortunately, when I tried sending the in iMessage the iMessage App couldn't locate the photo library. Is there a way to update the directory in iMessage?
Also, is there an easy way to transfer a photo back to my iPhone from my Macbook Pro?
I don't use iCloud so this is not an option.
love this! now am i able to delete the photos off of my phone and mac?
@TechwithEmilio What's the best/fastest external drive for 2013 MacBook Pro? Still running great after 10 years but Photos is painfully slow on older USB My Passport External drive
can you delete the previous photo library thing from the Mac hard drive?
Really clear and easy to understand thank you
Emilio this is SO helpful. Now I am wondering, when I want to upload my iphone photos to the new library on my external HD. How do I do this?
does this mean I can only see my picture on a mac ? or can i see them if I plug my external hard drive in a pc ?
thanks for the video !
Can I use two external hard drives, one as the actual library , and another as a backup security copy?
Thanks and congratulations for your work!
Question if you upload new photos does it go to the photos application or does it go to the copy on the external hard drive
With nearly 200GB of photos, it took a few hours but now it's offloaded to a passport external hard drive with 4TB vs the 1TB on my system hard drive. Now I can import more pictures. Thanks!
This was super helpful. Thanks so much.
Glad it was helpful!
Hi thanks for the video, i do still have a question do. After i moved the library to my external drive i cant inport any pictures in to that library. if you import pictures its does not give an error but it just dont do anything. I use a 4 tb t7 samsung external ssd. Any idea how to solve this ?
I found the photos app in the application tab but not the photos Library in the in the photos tab. Currently copying the photos app but I’m not sure if it’s the same thing. The file seems way too small for the amount of photos I have
Thank you. Help a lot. Good luck in your channel.
would this be the same method for documents and files in other libraries?
How do i add my photos from my photos app on the mac back to my iphone? I lost all my photos and my icloud is empty too when accidentally deleting everything on a new ipad which i didnt know was linked to everything… around 60k photos. but i did have a lot of them on my laptop photos app . Any help would be appreciated
hey thank you so much for the video it was super helpful straightforward steps. My only issue here now is that whenever I open a photo or video from photo library from my external hard drive it keep saying (Cannot start editing!) pictures quality is not high also my videos cannot open anymore. please advice on this. Thanks
You must make sure that your photos library has been synced successfully with iCloud and in preferences select download and keep originals. If your preferences is set to optimise storage and you use the drag and drop method, you will be saving the low quality versions of your files.
Hey Emilio! Is it possible to store the photo library files on not an apfs drive, like a synology nas or something? Just for backup purposes, storing the file NOT using it?
any ideas on how to store Live Photos on external drives? how to store photos without decreasing the quality and informations of it
Well done. Very straight forward! Thank you.
This was a very good and helpful video. Thank you!
Glad it was helpful!
@@TechWithEmilio Can you still remove the external hard drive from your macbook after you do all of this ?
Does this work if I am copying an outdated photos app into a hard drive to move to a new Mac? Which would obviously be the latest version of the photos app
Super clear instruction provided!!!👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
Glad it was helpful!
@@TechWithEmilio hello. Is it possible to still sync your photos library on the external drive to your iPad or iPhone. I wish Apple would let us create separate photos libraries and Apple TV libraries for movies so you can choose which library you want to sync to an iPad for example and choose a different photos library or movie library to your iPhone etc…. I know you can create more than one movies and photos libraries. Just can only have one “system library”. From my understanding only the designated “system library” will sync to your devices. I have tried making libraries and putting them in other folders. But this also does not work. Ugh.
Thanks for this. If you want to move your photos in the other direction - from an ext. drive back to the system library, how do you do that? Context: I have been keeping my photos on an ext drive for years, and do exactly the process you outline in order to get Photos to point to that drive. Now, I want to start backing up in iCloud, but iCloud will only work with the system library, so it's time for me to transition the photos back to the local system. Thanks!
I am also looking to do this!
I need to do same thing. Did you get an answer
Question #1. How do I revert it back to the original library on my macbook (Like if I want to not use my external hard drive as the designated location for my Photos app?)
Question #2. Can i use the photos I transferred into my external hard drive as individual files which i could manage without the use of my macbook? (example: Managing the transferred files on my external hard drive in a windows computer)
So will this library also be stored in icloud so I dont lose them if say the hard drive was stolen? If so there will be no reason for me to keep deleting photos from iCloud as I copy them to external drives now Im a bit of a fanatic....Would I be able to do this with my 2011 iMac or is it too old as I cant undate anymore to big sur like I have on my Macbook Pro..
Is there a way to as the max to find pictures in a external hard drive and import them into my Mac?
Nice information, summary at beginning etc 👍
If you put your Photos in icloud, but choose to keep a copy on your hard drive. How do you find/select the hard drive copy to make a copy to save on an external hard drive?
Can you still remove the hard drive from your macbook tho after you do all of this ?
If I move Photo onto an ext HD, or a flash drive, will I be able to tinker with the photos the same like I can do when in 'Photos', like crop, adjust, tint, etc?
yep yep
Very clear and precise instructions, and the new library on an external SSD works perfectly. However, if I connect the SSD to a second Mac (MacBook, for instance) and open the library file on the drive, though I can see all the photos if I try to edit any I’m informed it’s not the original file. Somehow the path to the original, full-res files is not being made clear to the second computer. Any ideas?
Great piece of instruction, just need to buy external hard drive then i will give this a go, thanks Emilio
Thank you! Wonderful explanation.
thanks so much emilo , this is awesome , so simple , id done this years ago on an older external hd and need to relearn how to do it on a new ssd type device , thanks so much ! 🤩
I have a question when you said we format it does that mean you wont be able to access your photos on other computers other then mac?
🇨🇦 👍💯 Fantastic visual presentation and to the point...no mucking about! The only difference at 7:16 time stamp instructions on your vid is that on my iMac was that there was no preferences when you click on Photos but to click on settings when you click on photos. I could see that the photo library default was now changed to the Extra data external hard drive which has 1T for storage. Thank you Sir! I subscribed to your channel!☺🍁🇨🇦 Eastern Canada chiming in
Simple, perfect. Thanks
I really really appreciate you because it’s been 2 weeks I’m just looking for how to move all my photos and videos to the external hard drive so I done it thank you so much really it was helpful 😊
Hi Emilio, I come back to this video time and time again, just to check I'm doing things correctly and it has been great. I need to move a heap of photos off my MacBook to free up space, and wondering does it matter how many Photo Libraries you have on an external drive, or do things get tricky if you have too many. I have bought a 5T EHD because I want to split all the photos into things like Cricket, Football, Art, Textiles, Garden and then just have the one library on the actual device. Is this something you thing should work?. My husband takes photos of all the kids football and cricket games dating back when they were very young, and now the oldest 34, and yes we have 1,000's, but I think they need to be in a libraries as that's what he's used to. Photos of Art, Textiles etc are just screenshots to encourage me to get my art supplies out, but I think it's easier to work in a library, Since the I cloud thing came along, I seem to end up with duplicates everywhere. Some photos, not just 2 or 3, sometimes 10-15. So I need to get it organised. I have a Desktop Mac, Mac Book, iPad and iPhone, so I need to make one of them the Mothership and download them onto the Desktop to stop all the duplicates. I can't tell you how many hours I've spent trying to delete duplicates. When I've realised I probably don't need to, Thoughts????
Thank you for your tutorial. Need advice. I backed up using time machine and realized a lot of repeats every hour, so deleted all the old back ups and kept the latest. Now when I open the latest, it says " cannot open photo library as it cannot find the original". So decided to copy and paste like you suggested separately without using time machine and now get the following error message " This operation cannot be completed as back up items cannot be modified" . The whole reason I needed to back up was for my photos. Now how do I ever get my hard disc to copy the photo library from my mac??? Need help!!!
How to move Photo folder from iMac to a NAS (Synology 220+) to free up space from Imac permanently?
Perfect Tutorial N, thanks 🙏🏽
can you do the same with Photo Booth, and if so could you explain? this video was very well explained!!
Hey! I need help please! How do I put photos from my iPhone to the library in the external drive without putting it in the library of the macbook?
Did you figure this out? I have the same question, problem to solve!
That was what I was searching up 💪 thanks for saving my time and really easily explanation for windows lover how I can do this 😁
This is clear, thanks.
This worked perfectly! I was able to dump 284.46 gb of photos and videos onto my hard drive, thank you so much for the tutorial! 😄
If I add photos/videos to my library but the external hard drive isn’t in, will it sync those into my external hard drive library the next time it’s plugged in? Or will it create duplicates/make it so there are 2 different libraries?
Watched your video, took notes & went to try it (but not actually do it yet) & when I opened Finder there was no PICTURES. What now? I have a MacBook Air Catalina OS. Thanks
Open Finder, go on Finder menu too left and open preferences, select Pictures. Done
Now how easy is it to back up HD Photos Library to say, google drive. And/Or can the Photos Library be saved directly to google one. I haven't tried yet, a bit afraid to start that.
I thought this was going to be a super difficult, but your directions were great, thank you. Do you have anything on merging photo libraries.
very informative thanks
very easy to understand, thankl you for the information...
I’m going to use an external hard drive that already has years worth of pictures on it and use it to transfer photos from a MacBook. Will that work? Formatting it would not be an option correct?😬
Hello and thank you it seams when I plug my phone into the Mac it uploads all photos back on my Mac and not the external hard drive ??
I did everything the way you instructed, but even after I did it, and deleted old Photos Library, the space on hard drive has not changed. If I open Photos, it begins trying to Restore, but not sure what that was doing do I stopped it. I did the Option Key + Photos, chose Other Library, etc. But if I click on Photos, it still tries to restore.
I spent my entire day attempting to transfer over 9,000 photos and videos from my iPhone to an external hard drive using my MacBook. I wish I had discovered this video sooner. Despite trying the Image Capture app, it failed to copy all of them to my external drive and left some files behind. This method seems to be the smartest way to store files outside of my MacBook while still using the Photo app.
Is it possible to move just some of the photos rather than the whole iphotos library? I just want to move the ones taking up a chunk of space...ALso, once over on the hrd drive, does it stay in the albums? Thanks
I have a pc and multiple picture folders is it can I download everything in the one shot to an external harddrive
Great job! Thank you.
excellent vid thank you!
I prefer the Apple photo solution to Moments or Photo Station. Could I use Synology NAS as the location for the Mac Photo Library, so I can use the Apple photo app? Does DSM 7 make it possible?
curious if you found an answer?
@@wattsobx I dont recall I got an answer, because 6 months since, I have not used Synology NAS as my Mac Photo Library. It cant be done, or its too complicated.
Thank you so Much
I’m from Indonesia, your videos really helping me!
Thank you Emilio..this was very helpful..
i’m confused. i’ve completed this, but you can only use your photos app on mac when you have your external drive connected. i want to just transfer all my icloud photos to my external hard drive and clear my photos app?
if i delete the original photos collection as seen in this video, then i won’t be able to open my photos app on my mac without having my drive connected?
Well presented. I now have to try it.
sounds good
Can i delete the photos from my phone as well if I have the photos library file as backup on my SSD?
Great 👍 thanks 🙏 I was exactly looking for this steps
You’re welcome 😊
Can I still access the photos on this if I were to switch to PC? Like if I connect the hard drive to a PC can I move all my photos to it?
what if I need to add more photos in external HD, do I delete existing file in Ext Hd and repeat the process again?
So once I’ve cleaned my phone and laptop out and put it on an external hardrive I can delete and not lose them as they’re stored correct ???