It is quite likely that you store digital photos on your Mac computer. If you are like most users, your photo library is an ever-expanding entity as you regularly add new images and never get around to deleting any of the older ones. After a while, the storage demands of your library can start to add up and cause lack of space issues on your internal storage device.
Professional photographers and videographers are even more prone to running into a storage issue due to the size of their Photo libraries. We are making the assumption that you know how to move your photos from your iPhone to your Mac, and that your photo library is on your computer’s internal hard drive.
There is a simple solution that can be used whether you earn your living with your photos or just like to take a lot of pictures. What you need to do is to move photos from your Mac to an external hard drive.
Fortunately, using an external hard drive to move files is easy. Just plug the external drive’s USB cable into your PC and copy your files to the drive. After everything is copied, shut down Windows, unplug the hard drive’s data cable from the PC, and plug the cable into your Mac.
- Connect your External Hard Drive or Flash USB To your Mac/Macbook. Connect your iPhone/iPad Device To Your Mac/MacBook via lighting cable. Launch Image Capture app. Find your iPhone/iPad in the left bar and open it. Choose all the photos on your iPhone/iPad and select destination for transfer.
- Photos.app- Preferences.- General- Library Location, then click Show in Finder to show Photos Library.photoslibrary in Finder. Move the whole Photos library to the external drive. Copy the whole Photos Library.photoslibrary to the external USB drive, after the transfer process is complete, delete Photos Library.photoslibrary from the computer.
We are going to show you how to do that, as well as point you toward a few externals storage devices that will work very well as repositories for your photo libraries. Near the end of the article, we will show you how to recover photos that may be accidentally deleted from your external hard drive.
How to Move Your Photos Library to an External Hard Drive
Let’s take a look at how to transfer photos from a Mac to an external hard drive. As with any major modification that you will be making to your computer or storage system, we recommend that you make sure that you have a good backup of your device before proceeding.
This adds a little time to the whole process, but in the event that something goes wrong during the data move, you will be glad that you have that backup. Just imagine all of your photos gone for good.
Transferring Mac Photos To External Hard Drive
Steps to Move your Photos Library to an External Drive
- Attach your external hard drive to your Mac.
- If you have not yet done so, format the drive. We suggest using the same filesystem format that you are using on your internal hard drive.
- Open a Finder window and verify that your new storage device is correctly attached. You should see it listed under Locations in the Finder Window.
- From the left panel in the Finder window, select Pictures. If Pictures is not an option, go into Finder’sPreferences> Sidebar and check the box Pictures.
- Right click on the Photos library icon and select Get Info. Verify that you have enough free space for the library on the external drive.
- Drag and drop the Photos library icon onto the hard drive icon either in Finder or on your Desktop.
- Wait for the copy to complete. The elapsed time will vary based on the size of your library.
- When finished copying, hold down the option key ⌥ while launching the Photos app.
- Click Other Library and navigate to the new location on the external device.
- In the Photos app, click on Preferences> General and select ‘Use as System Photo Library’. This is mandatory if you use iCLoud with your Photo library.
- Go to System Preferences> iCloud > Photos > Options. Select iCloud Photo Library to turn iCloud back on for your Photos.
- Disconnect your external hard drive and verify that all of your photos are indeed in the Photo library on the device. Once you are certain that the process is completed, you can drag the Photo library on your Mac to the Trash.
- If you want to immediately free up hard disk space, empty your Trash to permanently delete the photos.
At the end of this procedure, your external hard drive will contain all of the photos from your Photos library that were previously stored on your Mac. You have also freed up all of the space that they previously occupied. Nice work.
3 Best External Hard Drives for Storing Photos
![Move mac photos to external hard drive Move mac photos to external hard drive](/uploads/1/3/4/7/134739282/836435937.jpg)
There are many fine external storage devices from which to choose to hold your iPhoto libraries. Here are three of them.
Western Digital My Passport
You can obtain this external drive in a variety of colors and sizes ranging from 1TB to 4TB. It is self-powered and features password protection and hardware encryption. WD My Passport is compatible with USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 interfaces. It includes WD backup software that can be set to automatically protect your data on a timed schedule. It comes formatted for Windows but can be formatted for use on a Mac.
G-Technology G-Drive Mobile SSD R-Series
This drive is available in sizes up to 2TB and since it is an SSD drive, provides enhanced durability over traditional hard drives. It features high-speed data transfer and is shock and vibration resistant. A good choice if you plan on using your drive in challenging environments.
Samsung T5 SSD
Here is another SSD drive that comes in sizes from 250GB up to 2TB. It features a distinctive aluminum casing and is extremely portable, weighing in at 51 grams. Fast transfer speeds are a hallmark of Samsung SSDs and this model is no exception.
Tips to Recover Deleted Photos from an External Hard Drive on Mac
So now that you have all of your valuable photos on your external hard drive, what are you going to do if you accidentally delete some of those special memories? You might just be doing some housekeeping on your storage device and inadvertently send some photos to the Trash, which you then delete. Maybe you even formatted the drive by mistake.
Don’t panic. Here is a great way to recover deleted photos from an external storage device that is attached to a Mac.
- Download Disk Drill hard drive data recovery software for Mac. You can download it for free and use it to preview recoverable photos before spending a cent on the application.Data recovery for free
Your Companion for Deleted Files Recovery - Install the program and supply it with your Administrator’s password.
- Attach the removable storage device to your Mac.
- Start Disk Drill and select the external hard drive from the list of discovered devices.
- Click the “Recover” button and allow Disk Drill to scan your external drive for files that can be recovered. You will be presented with a list of the files that the tool can restore.
- At this point, you can recover these files by purchasing a licensed version of Disk Drill.
We hope this article has been helpful in showing you how to move your iPhoto libraries to an external hard drive. If you save a lot of photos on your computer, there is a good chance you will eventually want to free up the space they occupy for other things. Now you know how to accomplish that task.
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Written by Adam Engst Monday, 01 April 2019 14:03 - (484)
SSDs are essential for ensuring optimal performance on a Mac, but because they’re expensive, many people don’t have as much built-in storage space as they would like. If your Photos library has grown to the point where your SSD is nearly full, it might be time to think about offloading it to an external hard drive. (Don’t put it on a drive that you’re using as a Time Machine destination because there could be permissions conflicts, and note that Apple doesn’t recommend storing a Photos library on a drive shared over a network.)
Before we explain how to offload your photos, we want to mention another way of reducing the Photos footprint on your drive. If you’re using iCloud Photos (previously called iCloud Photo Library) to sync photos and videos between your devices, the originals are all stored in iCloud. In Photos > Preferences > iCloud, you can enable Optimize Mac Storage, which swaps the full-resolution images for smaller versions, saving a boatload of space. However, you may find Photos somewhat slower to use, as it has to download full-resolution versions of images you work with, and you won’t have a local backup of the original images. So it’s an option, but it has tradeoffs.
For most people with burgeoning Photos libraries, a better approach is to offload the entire library to an external hard drive. This approach comes with tradeoffs too; accessing images from a hard drive is slower than getting them from an internal SSD, and you have to figure out how you’re going to back up that drive as well. Plus, the drive has to be available, connected, and turned on (so you have to listen to it) for you to use Photos at all, which might be especially annoying if you regularly work remotely on a notebook Mac.
To move your Photos library to an external drive, follow these steps:
- If it’s running, quit Photos.
- In the Finder, drag Photos Library, which is stored in your Pictures folder by default, to the external drive. A few answers to common questions:
- Where on the external drive should I put it? It doesn’t matter, but we recommend putting it at the top level so you are less likely to lose track of it in the future.
- I got an error—what should I do? If you see an error telling you that you don’t have permission to copy to that drive, select the drive’s icon in the Finder and choose File > Get Info to open the Info window. If necessary click the triangle next to Sharing & Permissions, and make sure “Ignore ownership on this volume” is selected. If it’s not, click the lock icon, enter an administrator name and password, and select the checkbox.
- How long will it take to copy? Quite some time, depending on how many photos you have. It’s best to do overnight or when you don’t need to use Photos.
- When it’s done copying, double-click the new Photos Library icon on the external hard drive to launch Photos and set it to open that new copy on future launches.
- If you use iCloud Photos, designate this new library as the System Photo Library by choosing Photos > Preferences > General and clicking the “Use as System Photo Library” button.
- Scroll through your photo collection and make sure all your photos are present—double-click a few of them to spot check that the actual images open properly.
Mac Won't Let Me Move Photos To External Hard Drive
Obviously, your original Photos library is still taking up space on your SSD, but it’s best to use the new version for a little while before deleting the old one, just in case. When you’re ready to do that, drag it from the Pictures folder to the trash and choose Finder > Empty Trash to reclaim the space.
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