Move Photos Library To External Drive

 



2020-10-27 20:43:34 • Filed to: macOS 10.15 • Proven solutions

Create a new Photos Library to use as a skeleton to copy over the contents of the old, potentially corrupted one. Launch Photos with the Option key down. Click Create New, and save the new files on. Connect your external drive to your computer. Create the destination folder on your external drive by either clicking the “+” to the right of the Folders heading in the Folders panel and choose Add Folder, or go to: Library New Folder. In the directory window that opens, navigate to the external drive location and create a new folder.

An external drive provides more space to store documents, files, photos and music, among other things. Therefore, you can transfer your Mac photo library to an external drive on macOS 10.15 and create space for other work in your computer.

Whether you take pictures with your camera, compact or iPhone, you are likely to store the most valuable photos in your Mac. If doing this is a hobby, your Mac storage will fill fast and you may experience some space problems.

The best action to resolve this is to move Apple photos for OS 10.15 library to an external drive. This process is easy and enables you to continue keeping the photos safe.

Drive

This article has detailed information about how to move your photos library to save space on macOS 10.15 using easy steps. An external drive provides better backup.

How to Transfer Your Photos Library to an External Drive on macOS 10.15

Before you move your photos library to save space on macOS 10.15, ensure that your external drive is formatted for Mac OS Extended (Journaled). So access the “Disk Utility” and confirm its format. Reformat it if necessary.

1. It is impossible to transfer your Mac photo library to an external drive on macOS 10.15 when it is active. So, if you have opened any photos, start the process to manage your photos library to an external drive on macOS 10.15 by closing them first.

2. Trace your Mac’s Photos library, which is in the Picture folder.

Mac Move Photos Library To External Drive

  • Open a Finder window
  • Select your Mac “Home” folder; it is an icon resembling a house
  • Then click on “Pictures”

Copy Apple Photos To External Drive

3. As soon as the Pictures folder opens, you will find the Photos Library. It will be represented by an icon such as the one below.

4. If you would like to have a closer look at the contents before you move Apple photos for OS 10.15 library to an external drive, you can right-click. From the options, select “Show Package Contents” and view the master folders that have your photos.

5. Right-clicking on the Photos Library package and choosing “Get Info” can also give you information on the size of your library. Making this confirmation as you move your photos library to save space on macOS 10.15 is important because it informs you on the space needed in the external drive to accommodate the Photos Library.

It also enables you to plan for the future, if you wish to manage your photos library to an external drive on macOS 10.15 again.

6. To transfer your Mac photo library to an external drive on macOS 10.15, you can drag and drop it.

7. Be patient as it copies. The time taken in this transfer is dependent on the speed of connection and the size of your library.

8. When the process to move Apple photos for OS 10.15 library to an external drive is complete, hold the “Option/Alt” key and launch Photos.

9. Select “Other Library,” then navigate to the new external drive location.

10. In case you find a message stating that there some items should be downloaded from iCloud Photo Library, simply click on “Delete Incomplete Items.” This will allow you to download these items from iCloud on a later date.

Move Photos Library To External Drive

11. With Photos still open, select “Preferences” choose “General” and then go to “Use as System Photo Library.” This procedure enables Photos to work with iCloud Photo Library in case you use it. So, it is quite necessary.

12. The next step is turning iCloud Photo Library back on. So;

  • Go to “System Preferences”
  • Choose “iCloud”
  • Select “Photos”
  • Access “Options”
  • Select “iCloud Photo Library” to turn it on again.

13. Ensure that your drive is still plugged in for this final step, or connected via Wi-Fi. Confirm that all the photos moved are there and that everything is working as required.

14. Then proceed to deleting the Photo library from your Mac.

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The editor reduces the PDF document sizes by compressing the files and removing the unwanted and least important items in the PDF files. While doing so, saving and transferring of the files to local folders becomes easy.

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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. In addition to this, we will help you to back up your whole photo library to iCloud.

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.

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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

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

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.

How To Copy Pictures To Flash Drive

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.

Macos Move Photos Library To External Drive

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 ).

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
  6. 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.

  7. Open the Photo Library from the external drive.
  8. Click Photos men and then select the Preferences option.
  9. 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.
  10. 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.

Mirc serial generator download. 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.

How to back up your iCloud Photo Library

If you want to move all your photos which you have already backed up to your iCloud photo library to a storage device connected to your Mac. Follow our step by step guide above, but you need to download all the images from iCloud first.

Move Photos Library To External Drive

If you have already transferred your Photos library onto the external storage device, now you need to follow these steps.

  1. Open Photos on your Mac.
  2. Click Photos then click on Preferences.
  3. Click on the iCloud tab.
  4. Choose Download originals to this Mac.

Now all your iCloud photos will be saved on the storage device. (If you are running short of space you would probably not want to do that)

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