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How To Backup My Iphoto Library On Mac

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“Three or four years ago, my Macbook died, and because I was an avid user of Time Machine, I was able to retrieve virtually everything I cared about from my external hard drive, except my photos. 2008-4-29  Hey Folks, I'm trying to determine if I want to continue using iPhoto or if I should make the leap to Aperture/Lightroom. Library size seems to be a consideration, so I'm curious how large your iPhoto libraries are. I take a fair amount of pictures but not a ton. My library is around. 2009-12-31  The problem with iPhoto (maybe the only insurmountable problem) is that you have to backup the entire bundled library at once. One reason I went with Aperture and then Lightroom is that each image file is backed up individually, so an incremental backup only backs up new or changed files and not my whole library.

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 Photo Library and use Optimize Mac Storage, or move your library to an external drive.

  1. How to safely move your Mac's iPhoto library onto an external drive. By Stephen Robles Saturday, January 24, 2015, 11:00 pm PT (02:00 am ET) Today's digital cameras and advanced smartphones like.
  2. Mac users can backup their photos or iPhoto library in three ways. Time Machine, Backup to external drive, and by using a third party App. Continue reading the page to know complete details on how to backup iPhoto Library on Mac.

Before you start, be sure to back up your library.

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

How To Backup My Iphoto Library On Mac Pro

  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 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.
How To Backup My Iphoto Library On Mac

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.

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 disk space.

Open another Photos library

If you have multiple libraries, here's how to open a different one:

  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

How To Backup My Iphoto Library On Mac Download

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

How To Backup Photos Library On Mac

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

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 erased, this checkbox will either not be present, or won't be selectable after unlocking. Erase and reformat the drive for this option to be available.