Back up the library in Photos on Mac. Use Time Machine: After you set up Time Machine, it automatically backs up the files on your Mac. If you ever lose the files in your Photos. Manually copy your library to an external storage device: Drag the Photos library (by default in the Pictures folder. Nov 09, 2018 Set a photo library as System Photo Library. Open Photos on your Mac. Click Photos then click on Preferences. Click on the iCloud tab. Choose Download originals to this Mac.
This user tip has been moved to this new location: Where is it safe to store a Photos Librar… - Apple Community
- Sep 18, 2017 To save storage on your Mac, drag the Photos Library to an external drive. Photo can open it here, if you double click the library in the Finder to open it in Photos. If the library is working well on the external drive, you can delete it from your Pictures folder.
- Sep 25, 2013 This is how to move iPhoto photos to an external hard drive. On most newer Macs that are flash-based and/or Macs that are running out of internal hard disk space, storing photos on an external.
The old version will no longer be updated, because editing it will change the formatting.
How To Save Mac Photos On External Hard Drive
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Photo Libraries tend to grow over the years, and sooner or later they will be too large to be stored on the system drive. We can move our Photos Libraries to an external drive, but the drive needs to be correctly formatted as MacOS Extended (Journaled) or APFS and locally mounted. Do not format the external drive for the Photos Library as case-sensitive, if the internal drive is not case-sensitive. A case-sensitive drive for the Photos Library can cause flag, if the drive is to be used from different user accounts or computers.
How To Save Mac Photo Library To External Drive Mac
You should not use the drive you are using for Time Machine to host your Photos Library, or Time Machine cannot back up the library. See: Back up the Photos library on Mac - Apple SupportWARNING: If a Photos library is located on an external drive, don’t use Time Machine to store a backup on that external drive. The permissions for your Photos library may conflict with those for the Time Machine backup.Occasionally Photos will also not be able to connect to the library again, if you want to open it a second time.
This user tip was generated from the following discussion: Where is it save to store a Photos Library? Requirements for the external driveApple fixed the Photos Help. The paragraph below is no longer valid:
Photos 3.0 on macOS 10.13 High Sierra introduced an added complication. If we move a library to an external drive, the library can no longer be backed up using Time Machine. We have to use a different backup method for the library, for example clone the external drive to a backup drive.https://support.apple.com/guide/photos/system-photo-library-overview-pht211de786
WARNING: If a Photos library is located on an external drive, don’t back up the drive using Time Machine. The permissions for your Photos library may conflict with those for the Time Machine backup.