Mac Move Pictures Library To External Drive

Export Pictures To External Drive
My Pictures Library
Mac Move Pictures Library To External Drive Yosemite
Mac External Drive

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.

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

Nov 21, 2016 In this video, I'll show you how to safely move your Photos library to an external hard disk and free up an amazing amount of space in the process. Dec 11, 2018 If you just have your photos in a folder on your Mac, all you need to do is plug your external drive in and move them over. If you’re using another app that maintains a library, you’ll have to configure things within that app. Jan 29, 2020 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 Library and use Optimise Mac Storage, or move your photo library to an external drive. Before you start, make sure that you 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.

Export Pictures To External Drive

Copy the Photos Library from your Pictures Folder to an external disk. Hold down the option (or alt) key and launch Photos. From the resulting menu select “Other Library” and navigate to the new location. You’ll get a message that says: “This library contains items that need to download from iCloud Photo Library.”. Nov 09, 2018 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. 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.

Dec 20, 2019 Photo Library is home to all your photos, albums and slideshows. If you are trying to free up Mac storage, it is wise to transfer all your photos from MacBook to external hard drive. Luckily, this post will show you the latest solution to move photo library from Mac to external hard drive.

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

Quit Photos.
In the Finder, go to the external drive where you want to store your library.
In another Finder window, find your library. The default location is Users > [username] > Pictures, and it's named Photos Library.
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
After the move is finished, double-click Photos Library in its new location to open it.
If you use iCloud Photo Library, designate this library as the System Photo Library.

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:

Quit Photos.
Press and hold the Option key while you open Photos.
Select the library that you want to open, then click Choose Library.

Photos uses this library until you open a different one.

Learn more

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

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.

If you have ever synced your iPhone, iPad, or other Apple devices using your Mac, you have backup folders stored on your internal drive. It's just the way life is. Maybe you only have a few files from a couple of backups and they don't take up much space. Maybe you've been backing up your iPhone for years and have a space hog on your hands.

If you back up your iPhone or iPad through your computer and feel the need to remove these files and place them instead onto an external hard drive, it is possible to do, but beware, Apple really doesn't recommend it.

Note: This guide is for people who back up their iPhone or iPad using a computer, not through iCloud.

What are these backup files and why are they taking up so much space?

When you back up your mobile device using your computer, the backup is stored on your Mac. The location of the backups is in a folder called MobileSync, and sometimes it gets pretty big, especially if you are syncing multiple devices. Old backups are replaced with new ones, but families that have multiple devices backed up to one computer are going to take up a lot of storage space.

We highly recommend syncing on iCloud, and then deleting the backups on your Mac, rather than relocating them. But, if you're still bent on moving them to an external hard drive, we're here to help.

My Pictures Library

Step 1: Locate your backups

This part is easy. Your backups are stored in a MobileSync folder. You can find them by typing ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup into Spotlight. You can also find the backups for specific devices from Finder.

Click Finder on your Mac's Dock.
Click on your device on the left side of the Finder window.
Click on Manage Backups on the General tab.
Source: iMore
.In the iTunes app on your Mac, choose iTunes Quit iTunes.Hold down the Option key while you open iTunes.In the window that appears, do one of the following:.Create a new library: Click Create Library.Choose a different library: Click Choose Library.You can name your iTunes library (the folder containing your iTunes content and the ) whatever you like. How to access music library on multiple macs. For best results, if you create additional iTunes libraries, don’t name the new libraries “iTunes” or “iTunes Music.” Make sure each iTunes library has its own unique name so you’ll know which is which.In each library you create, you can select different preferences for the iTunes Media folder, the types of content that are displayed, parental settings, and the library name. To set preferences for a library, choose iTunes Preferences while using the library.
Select a specific device.
Hold down the Control key and click on the device.
Select Show in Finder from the list of available options.
Source: iMore

Step 2: Move your backups to an external hard drive

This part is easy, too. But, you really have to pay close attention to the name of your hard drive and the new folder names you create, including punctuation and spacing. This information will be used when creating a Terminal pathway. If you use different names then the ones I suggest, be sure to replace it with the exact name you have in the Terminal command in Step 3.

Connect your external hard drive to your Mac if it isn't already connected.
Open the external hard drive.
Go back to the Finder window with your iOS backups in it and select the device backup folder (It will either be called 'Backup' or have a bunch of numbers and letters).
Drag it to your external hard drive.
Source: iMore
Enter your administrator password to authenticate your action.
Rename the iOS backup folder that is now on your external hard drive to ios_backup. You may have to enter your administrator password once again to make this change.
Rename the old backup folder in Finder to old_backup.
Source: iMore

Do not delete the old_backup folder yet.

Step 3: Create a symlink to tell your computer the new location of your backups

This is the more difficult and most important step to moving your iOS backups to an external hard drive. If you don't perform this step, your computer won't be able to back up your iPhone or iPad anymore. You'll have to manually move the folders back to your Mac instead.

In this step, you'll create a symlink — or symbolic link. When you create a symlink, you are creating a new path for Finder to take to get to the backups folder.

Former iMore writer and Mac genius (seriously, he's a genius with a Mac) Peter Cohen explains symlinks perfectly.

Some applications don't follow aliases properly. An older way of creating those sorts of connections is more reliable for actions like what we want iTunes to do: Symbolic links, or symlinks. They work at a low enough level that applications and operating system functions don't have as hard a time with them as they do aliases.

How to access application library mac. We're going to use the Mac's Terminal app to create a symbolic link to trick iTunes into backing up onto your external drive rather than the boot drive.

If you're using macOS Mojave or later, you will first need to change the permissions for Terminal on your Mac. Otherwise, you won't have permission to follow the remaining steps of this process. To do so:

Open System Preference.
Select Security & Privacy.
Choose the Privacy tab.
If this screen is locked, select Click the lock to make changes at the bottom left of the screen. Otherwise, skip to Step 6.
Enter your system password and click Unlock on the popup screen.
Source: iMore
Click Full Disk Access on the left-hand side of the screen.
Choose + to add Terminal to the list of apps with full control on your computer.
In the Finder screen that's displayed, type Terminal in the search box.
In the search results, highlight Terminal.
Tap Open.
Source: iMore

Next, a lesson in using Terminal. The proper pathway is very important for this to work. Every person's hard drive name and every backup folder name will be different. The following is the anatomy of the Terminal code we are using:

ln -s /Volumes/External/ios_backup ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/4f1234a05e6e7ccbaddfd12345678f1234b123f

ln -s: The command that tells the operating system to go to the new location.
Volumes: A hard drive.
External: The name of a hard drive. Yours will likely be named something else. In the Terminal command, you must change 'External' to whatever your external hard drive is named.
ios_backup: The renamed backup folder you dragged into your external hard drive. This is the new place that your iOS backups will be stored.
~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup: The command that tells the operating system where the backup is.
4f1234a05e6e7ccbaddfd12345678f1234b123f: The name of the device backup folder. If you are transferring all of your backups, this will just be named 'Backup.' If you are transferring one device, use the name of the backup folder for your device. The one above isn't even a real file name. You must change the above backup folder name to whatever is the name of the folder you are transferring.

If your external hard drive's name has a space, be sure to use the proper coding. For example, if your hard drive is named 'My Passport' be sure to use a backslash after My, then Space, then Passport. Like this: My Passport. Don't forget to capitalize when necessary.

Find Terminal using Spotlight.
Type the code below.
Don't forget to change the hard drive name and the backup folder name to reflect the name of your hard drive and backup folder.
Source: iMore
Hit Return.
Quit Terminal.

You will see a new folder in your MobileSync folder that is either called 'Backup' or the series of numbers and letters that represent your device. You can tell this is a symlink because it will have an arrow in the bottom left corner.

Next, you'll need to confirm that it worked before deleting your old_backup file on your Mac.

Click Finder on your Mac's Dock.
Click on your device on the left side of the Finder window.
Click on Back Up Now on the General tab.
Source: iMore
Open the ios_backup folder on your external hard drive.
Check to see that the date and time on the latest backup is for the one you just completed.
Source: iMore

If the pathway relocation worked, and you can confirm that backups are now happening on your external hard drive, you can delete the old_backup folder on your Mac.

Note: If you go back to the MobileSync folder and open the symlink folder, you will see the names of the files that relate to your backup. These are aliases. Not actual files. It's like a thumbnail of a picture.

Step 4: Disable automatic backups when connected to your computer

If you don't always have an external hard drive connected to your Mac, you're going to need to disable automatic backups of your iPhone or iPad. Otherwise, whenever you connect your iOS device to your Mac, you'll get an error message.

Click Finder on your Mac's Dock.
Click on your device on the left side of the Finder window.
Tick the box at the bottom next to Automatically sync when this iPhone is connected.
Source: iMore