Copying the iPhoto Library Click to see a larger image
I've had several conversations lately with people who are filling up their hard drive with photos from their digital cameras. This isn't too surprising because if you are like me you take tons of photos and never delete any. And as digital cameras are getting better, their file sizes are getting larger.
Your main hard drive contains the system files for Mac OS X and all the files for all the users. Eventually, even with the best of housekeeping, you run out of space to keep new files. At that point it makes sense to invest in an external hard drive.
Almost any external hard drive you find will be of good quality. Get a Firewire drive if you have an older Mac and a USB 2.0 drive if you have a newer Mac. Somewhere in the size range of 300 gig will keep you happy for quite a while.
Once you have your new external hard drive, you can move your iPhoto library to it. This will free up the space on your main hard drive and let you grow your iPhoto library to thousands of photos.
Note: If you have a notebook Mac, this tip isn't very practical. You would have to have the external drive plugged in every time you opened iPhoto.
Moving your iPhoto library isn't very difficult, but there is always the risk of making a mistake and losing data. Losing precious photos isn't a good thing, so BACK UP FIRST. (You DO have a backup plan, right???)
What we are going to do is actually COPY the iPhoto library from the main hard drive to the external drive. This is safer than just moving because if something happens during the copy we still have the original library. Once you are sure that everything copied properly, then you can delete the iPhoto library from the main hard drive.
Here are the steps to make the copy of your iPhoto library. It would be helpful if you print these instructions out since they are longer and a little more involved than normal tips on Basics4Mac.
Quit iPhoto if it is running.
Make sure your external drive is connected and turned on. In the Finder, the external drive will show as an orange drive icon in the
left pane.
Open two Finder windows and position them one on top of the other as shown in the image on the right. (click the image to see it larger.)
In the top Finder window, start at your Home folder (the one with the icon of the house and your user name by it) and select the Pictures folder. Inside the Pictures folder you should see a folder called iPhoto Library.
In the bottom Finder window, select your external drive. That is where we are copying the iPhoto Library to.
Select the iPhoto Library folder from the top Finder window.
Drag
it to the bottom Finder window. This will start a copy process. How long the copy takes depends on how large your iPhoto library is, but it should take at least several minutes.
Now we need to tell iPhoto that you have moved the iPhoto library and where to look for it.
Tell iPhoto to look for the library Click to see a larger image
Hold down the Option key on the keyboard and open iPhoto. You will see a dialog box like the one on the right.
Click the Choose Library... button. You will get a standard Open dialog window.
Click on your external hard drive icon (the orange one) in the left pane. You should then see the iPhoto Library folder that you copied earlier.
Select the iPhoto Library folder and click the Open button. iPhoto will open and you should see your photos.
I suggest that you wait a week or so to make sure there aren't any problems before you drag the original iPhoto Library in your Home > Pictures folder to the Trash.
Don't forget that now you have to back up your iPhoto files on your external drive. Again I ask, You do have a backup plan, right???
Note: If you don't feel comfortable doing these steps yourself or get lost somewhere in the middle, check out Live Help. I can connect to your computer remotely and do the move for you.
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Comments
Moving Your iPhoto Library to an External Drive | 49 comments | Create New Account
The following comments are owned by whomever posted them. This site is not responsible for what they say.
Moving Your iPhoto Library to an External Drive
Authored by: Anonymous on
Tuesday, August 28 2007
Will this also work for drives connected to the new Airport Extreme Base Station? Also, can multiple Macs access the iPhoto library in this way? For example, one household, multiple Macs, and one library.
Yes, you can move your iPhoto Library to an external drive connected to an Airport Extreme Base Station, but a wifi connection is far slower than a directly connected external drive. I did some testing and while it worked, I got the spinning beach ball over and over and performance was lousy - not something you'd want to do on a regular basis.
As far as sharing among multiple users, that works, but only one person can access the iPhoto Library at a time.
Authored by: Anonymous on
Friday, September 14 2007
This was a good step by step. I would love to post this to my site also. This is a problem that affects so many users, even on their business machines.
Authored by: Anonymous on
Friday, November 09 2007
Hi,
I noticed that the aliasses in the iphoto library do link to the original pics on my hard drive. The reason is probably that I did not choose to import the original photos to iphoto, but wanted to have them in other folders in the original file structure.
Is there a way to change this?
I have 11,000 photos and have keywords and comments attached to them, so I don't want to import them to the new iphoto library.
Authored by: Anonymous on
Sunday, November 11 2007
Thanks for the quick reply!
Sorry, I didn't express myself clearly: I have the pics on my internal hard drive and would like to free space there. So it seems that all the hours I spent adding keywords and comments would be lost if I move the pics to the external drive? Oh my god!
best,
Georg
I hate to say it, but I tested it and it is true. If you move your files from the internal HD to the external one, you will lose your meta data.
Just to be clear here-- this is only true if you store your photos OUTSIDE of the iPhoto Library. If you let iPhoto manage your photos, then you can move the iPhoto Library to an external HD following the instructions above and all will be fine.
I am in this exact situation, with nearly 50K photos stored outside of iPhoto. Has anyone found a way to either
(a) have iPhoto ingest all of these external photos and maintain the existing metadata
or
(b) bulk change the shortcuts that are located within the iPhoto package that point to the originals (so that I can point them to their new location on an external drive)?
Authored by: nicholaspe on
Wednesday, January 02 2008
Great site. If I follow your instructions above, will I have any issues with iWeb and Web Gallery trying to locate photos or update folders that were created prior to transferring the photos? Thanks.
When you open iPhoto with the Option Key held down, you are telling iPhoto where to find your iPhoto Library. iPhoto then shares that info with iWeb, etc so they can find your photos as well.
Authored by: patlovesmac on
Sunday, January 13 2008
I followed the instructions and i got a message that says that my external drive can not be modified. I have a 500G Western digital Mybook, which is supposed to work with MAC, and a 4G ibook 12", what am i doing wrong?
is this a brand new drive that you don't have any other data on?
If so you might want to go to Disk Utility and format it in Mac OS X format. When you bought it it was formatted for PC (which works, but Mac formatting is better)
Authored by: Anonymous on
Wednesday, January 23 2008
Great step by step instructions. Quick question. I've copied the iphoto library to an external hard drive - it's about 12 GB. I've tried to burn a copy to a DVD as an extra backup - but the max space on a DVD is 4.7 GB. So, how do I chop the iPhoto library up to make it fit on three DVDs?
Once I get this all figured out - I plan on only keeping 12 months of photos on my laptop - I'll delete the rest off. I'll use iPhoto from my laptop to manage those photos & any I add. I'll go to the external hard drive if I need the older pictures.
Glad to hear that you are thinking about backing up that external hard drive!!!
Mac OS X doesn't have any way to span data across multiple CDs or DVDs which is what you need to do.
The best way to do this is with Backup 3 which is part of dot Mac. Of course dot Mac is a subscription service that cost $99 / year but it does offer alot for the price. (You can learn more about dot Mac at this link to the Apple Store: http://tinyurl.com/34k2ly)
That's a great step by step.. and working well..
I would have another request, if you could give me a tip...
I use 2 computers.. imac at home and MB Pro, when travelling.. to load my pictures...
I love using keywords and albums...
how I can synchronize my 2 macs, when back from holiday ?
is it only possible to erase all my imac HDD.. and copy my library from my MBP ?
(would be little bit fastidious to do it, each time...)
do you have any other way to manage this ?
thanks a lot !
Thierry
I knew there was an answer but it just wasn't coming to me. Then it hit me in the middle of the night last night: A piece of software called iPhoto Library Manager.
It comes in a free mode and a paid mode ($20US) for access to advanced features. One of the advanced features is the ability to merge iPhoto Libraries without losing any of your keywords or edits.
With iPhoto Library Manager you could keep a master Library on your iMac and then build a secondary Library on your MBP when you travel. Then when you get home you could merge the secondary Library into the Master Library.
Afternoon,
great instructions on moving the iPhoto Library, went well on 8k worth of pictures. iPhoto sees the new libraries location no issue. However iTunes somehow sees the old library with no content???? Any guidance to getting iTunes on the same "page" as iPhoto? Thxs.
You have to do the same trick with iTunes that you do with iPhoto.... Hold down the option key when you open iTunes. You will then be asked to locate the music library. Navigate to the iTunes library on your external drive and select that one.
Thxs Chris for the speedy reply but it looks like I didn't explain myself clearly. I'm looking to change the location of the iPhoto Library within iTunes in order to sync to an photo iPod.
now I'm really confused. I opened iPhoto so that I could create a new library on the internal drive. Closed out iPhoto went into iTunes and it sees the new library. Went back into iPhoto, switched to the external library, closed iPhoto, went to iTunes and again the wrong old "missing" library shows up.
well, I'm a bit confused, too. I've tested various scenarios on my computer and have had no problems. I did some searching online and I found this link:
It appears to be a similar problem to yours. I don't completely agree with the answer, however. Deleting preference files won't cause any damage, but will undo the customization that you have done to your applications. I suggest that from the above answer, you _move_ com.apple.iApps.plist _to the desktop_ so you can put it back if that does not solve your issue. Test after moving com.apple.iApps.plist to see if that fixed things before moving the other plist files.
Great contribution to the forum - been doing this for a while, and works great, but got the impression that iphoto doesn't really really like it.... anyways been fine for months, but recently i created a second library on my powerbook for when i don't have the hard drive. All fine, but in the last two days...
When i option key when opening iphoto - select the library on the hard drive. It finds it, occasionally says thumbnails need updating, but no images appear at all, or albums. Check the file - still 40gb, doesn't say it is corrupted..
Wanting to sort this to move over to Aperture - any thoughts?
I've had all my pictures on an external hard drive for about 3 years now, I only open Iphoto when its connected to my notebook. I was away from home and needed to empty my camera so I just put it in a new library on my notebook hard drive to transfer to the regular library when I returned. Now I cant get iphoto to let me choose a library. It opens up the new library I started while away and wont recognize the old one on my external hard drive. The picture files are all there but I cant open any of them. When I hold down the option button I get the little menu that says: Remove from dock, open at login...etc. instead of letting me choose a new library location. I had this problem once before and I took it to a store but I dont remember how they fixed it. Any ideas??
How weird-- I logged on here just now to report this same problem (I created a copy of iPhoto on my ext drive, and now want to be able to open the app on my desktop, and keep the ext drive copy as a backup). How do we get the Mac to 'choose' the hard drive iPhoto instead of the copy on the external drive?
Help! Everything worked perfectly, until I checked in iMovie(08). I have a ton of projects in iMovie. I know that the video files are pulled from iPhoto. Since making the move to the external drive, iMovie gives me the yellow exclamation mark. The photos turn up fine and iMovie sees the photo library fine. Is this a drive formatting issue that iMovie can't access the video contents of iPhoto through an external drive? I have a 160 gig MyBook drive and it says it is formatted to "Mac OS Extended (Journaled). I don't know what any of that means, but it defaulted there. Please help!
...one more thing I just noticed. The footage in the Event Library of iMovie is all there. It is apparently found just fine. Its the Project Library footage (video only!) that has the exclamation mark. For example, with in a single project, that may have combined video and photos, the videos have the exclamation but the photos are fine. Also, I am able to see these videos in the Project Library editing pane even though they have the exclamation point....
I followed the above instructions & now I have "lost" all of my photos from the past two years!
There are no sub-folders for 2007 or 2008. I looked for them in the original location & I can't find them there either. I'm starting to panic......
I'll bet you didn't really move your iPhoto folder to the external drive, but rather it got moved somewhere on your startup disk. (I've done that before and had the same panic.)
Try this query in Spotlight "kind:folder 2007" (no quotes) it will probably help you track down the missing folders.
Spotlight?
Sorry - I feel like I'm fumbling around in the dark: & I thought I was pretty well versed on this Mac stuff...!
What is/where do I find "Spotlight"?
that makes sense. Spotlight didn't arrive until 10.4.
It has been years since I used 10.3 so my memory of it is pretty fuzzy. There is a Find feature in the Finder, though-- try Command-F. Then type 2007 and see if it comes up with a folder.
Since it is hard to troubleshoot via emails, you might consider Live Help where I can connect to your computer and see your screen. Check out the Live Mac Help link at the top of the page.
I followed the above instructions & now I have "lost" all of my photos from the past two years!
There are no sub-folders for 2007 or 2008. I looked for them in the original location & I can't find them there either. I'm starting to panic......
Have you tried searching the entire drive for the folders (using the "Find" command)? Also try other drives you have connected. They're there somewhere. You just need to keep looking.
Have gone through the steps above, and it all works well so far. I still haven't deleted the original copy of my iphoto library - I'll wait a few days just to make sure everything is working well - but was wondering if i need to hold down option every time I open iphoto now to ensure that it opens the version on my external HD?
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