How to move Photos Library to External Hard Drive on Mac
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 มิ.ย. 2021
- 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.
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!!!
Thank you SO much for this!! Easy to understand, love the walk throughs ☺️
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?
Perfect execution on explaining everything I needed to do! Thank you so much!
Great job leading me thru the process! Really appreciate your skills.
Helped me soo much i been trying figure how to transfer to my hard drive for months THANK YOU 🙏🏾
Well done. Very straight forward! Thank you.
Simple, perfect. 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 :)
I appreciate this video so much. As a new TH-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! Wonderful explanation.
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!
Really clear and easy to understand thank you
1. Copy Photos library from the Pictures folder into your properly formatted external drive.
2. Hold Option key while clicking Photos app to select your library.
3. Try opening the copied library (can verify location in the selection).
4. Delete the original library,
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)
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! 😄
very easy to understand, thankl you for the information...
Perfect Tutorial N, 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 😊
This is clear, thanks.
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 ! 🤩
Great job! Thank you.
Thank you so Much
I’m from Indonesia, your videos really helping me!
This was super helpful. Thanks so much.
Glad it was helpful!
very informative thanks
Thank you Emilio..this was very helpful..
Great piece of instruction, just need to buy external hard drive then i will give this a go, thanks Emilio
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.
thank you so much
excellent vid thank you!
Nice information, summary at beginning etc 👍
Thank you !
Thank you. Help a lot. Good luck in your channel.
Thank you
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 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.
Thakn you.
Well presented. I now have to try it.
sounds good
Great 👍 thanks 🙏 I was exactly looking for this steps
You’re welcome 😊
My wife said thank you it’s very straight forward and worked 100%.
very simple , perfectly explain fo ra nerd to explain ;) well done! THANKYOU
Thank you very much 🥰
🇨🇦 👍💯 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
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!
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 ?
THANK YOU
I would redo this video and add 'Use System Library' button in Photos Preferences, as the final step in relocating your Photos library.
But thank you for your effort, it all contributed to me understanding this task better.
thanks for the tip geek mee
Cheers mate! Worked a treat 👍🏆🇬🇧
good info and how you explained. better then others.👍
Glad it was helpful!
Thanks a lot. 🙏
Useful and insiteful
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?
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.
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?
Good video easy to follow
Glad you liked it
thank you so much for guiding, all these year I'm used to windows which is a game of goats but why Mac had to make this task game of thrones... still your video made it easy and task accomplished.
Brooooooooo love you
Thanks a loooottttttt😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢love you brother
can you do the same with Photo Booth, and if so could you explain? this video was very well explained!!
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?
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?
love this! now am i able to delete the photos off of my phone and mac?
Thanks for the video. Can I still use iCloud given the photo library is external HD?
Great video
Thanks!
Thanks for the help, subscribe is a must 👌🏼
Thanks for the sub!
Ty
THANK YOU!!! Subscribing!
Thanks for the sub!
Very useful. Can you rename or date the file for another time? 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.
So funny how you described where the Alt button is : DDD
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!
cheers brother
No worries
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?
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!
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
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.
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?
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.
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 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?
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?
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.
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?
Thank you for telling me to get a big hard drive for two minutes
@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
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????
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
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!!!
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?
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 ?
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?
interjection French. thank you very much.
Merci Beaucoup
Thank you too!
Thnz 😎
would this be the same method for documents and files in other libraries?
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?
any ideas on how to store Live Photos on external drives? how to store photos without decreasing the quality and informations of it
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.
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)
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