Mac Photos Move Library To External Drive

Moving Iphoto To External Drive
Mac Os Move Photos Library To External Drive
Export Photos To External Hard Drive
Apple Photos Library External Drive
Mac Photos Move Library To External Drives
Mac Photos Move Library To External Drive Space

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.

5) Connect an external hard drive, a USB thumb drive or other storage device to your Mac, wait until its icon appears on the desktop. Now drag the “Photos Library.photoslibrary” file from the Pictures folder on the storage device icon.
Should this happen, you've got three options: madly prune your media collection; move the iTunes library to a different Mac with more disk space; or copy the iTunes library to an external drive.

Consolidate your library. Over time, it's easy for your music, movies, apps, and other iTunes content. To move our Photos Library, we drag it to its new location, double-click it, and the Photos app will now point to it. So, that was pretty easy. We’ll next show you how to create a completely new System Photo Library. Creating a New System Photo Library. There are any number of reasons you might want to create a new system library in Photos. To transfer your photos library from an Apple Mac to an external drive, you first need to locate the photos or a folder you wish to move. You can right-click and copy, then paste in the new location. Dragging and dropping will also copy the images or folder. For the step-by-step process, look below.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Moving Iphoto To External Drive

Open Photos on your Mac.
Click Photos then click on Preferences.
Click on the iCloud tab.
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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Run out of storage on your computer? Thinking about removing iTunes library and sending it to the external hard drive? Well, this article can help you out with two simple solutions on how to move iTunes library to external hard drive.

Common iTunes Tips

iTunes Music Management

iTunes Library Transferring

Fix iTunes Issues

iTunes How-tos

When we get a large collection of music in our iTunes library, it would be not easy for us to delete certain songs from the whole collection. However, when you are confronting that there is not enough space on your computer, it would be a better option for you to move it to an external hard drive. Besides, for these beloved songs, you may just like the question above want to transfer your iTunes library from one device to another.

Then here comes the problem: how to move iTunes library to external hard drive? This post can render you two possible ways to achieve it. Read on to learn more.

How to Move iTunes Library to External Hard Drive with iTunes

Step 1. To find the location of your iTunes media folder, launch iTunes on your computer > Then click “Edit” (PC) or “iTunes”(Mac) on the menu bar > Preferences > Advanced > Here you will see the “iTunes Media folder location” in your computer.

How to Move iTunes Library to External Hard Drive with iTunes – Step 1

Mac Os Move Photos Library To External Drive

Step 2. Then click File > Library > Organize Library > Check the box named as “Consolidate files” > Click OK.

How to Move iTunes Library to External Drive with iTunes – Step 2

Step 3. Quit iTunes > Connect your external hard drive to the computer > Open the iTunes media folder from the location in step 1 > Drag the folder to the external hard drive.

If you intend to delete the original iTunes media content on your computer, to make iTunes still work with this iTunes library, you have to open iTunes > then click “Choose Library” in the pop-up window > select the iTunes library folder in your external hard drive.

Remember you have to connect your external hard drive to your computer every time you want to use iTunes with this iTunes library.

How to Move iTunes Library to External Hard Drive with AnyTrans

Besides using iTunes to move the music from your iTunes library to external hard drive, there is an easier way for you to achieve it – AnyTrans. It is a professional iOS data manager that allows you to simply transfer your iOS data from one device to another.

Transfer music directly from iTunes to your hard drive or another iDevice without hassle.
Transferring music speedily. AnyDroid supports you to transfer more than 1000 songs in minutes.
Manage and transfer almost all your iOS data like contacts, photos, ringtones, music, calendar, from one iDevice to another or from iDevice to computer and vice versa.
No leak or loss of data. AnyTrans assures that all the data in the process of transferring would not be leaked or lost.

AnyTrans – iTunes Library Manager

Export Photos To External Hard Drive

Thinking about a good way to transfer your iTunes library to an external hard drive? AnyTrans can be your perfect helper. You can easily move iTunes Library to external hard drive or computer or another iDevice without any trouble.

Download AnyTrans now on your PC/Mac and follow the below steps to know how to move iTunes library to the external hard drive.

Step 1. Launch AnyTrans > Tap on iTunes Library from the menu > Choose files you want to transfer or select all > Click Send to PC button to transfer.

Apple Photos Library External Drive

Choose iTunes Library to Transfer