MacMost Q&A Forum • View All Forum QuestionsAsk a Question

How Do Use an External Drive for Photos?

Now retired and have too many pictures from work that I’m not ready to delete.
Want to put on an external drive and delete them from Mac library. Most are in iPhoto, which I like better than Photos.
Is this possible? Have the external drive but have never used it.
Assume make folders and then transfer?
What happens if I want to use photos from the external drive?
Thank you
—–
Joanne Fisher

Comments: One Response to “How Do Use an External Drive for Photos?”

    3 years ago

    iPhoto is obsolete and no longer runs on new Macs or the last two versions of macOS. You should really update to Photos as you'll eventually have to if you get a new Mac anyway and better to do it now when you can take your time than to be forced to do it quickly as you may have to in the future.

    So if you are still using iPhoto, then you aren't using iCloud Photos. So your photos are only on your local drive. How you move your library depends on how you have it set up now. I haven't used iPhoto in many many years, but I remember that you can store your photos inside your library or keep them as external files. If it is the former, then you should be able to just move your whole library in one big copy to the external drive.

    Sounds like you have a lot of curating planned too. I would move to Photos first. Maybe take this as you opportunity to do so. Set up your new Photos library on your external drive and then import all of your iPhoto library photos to it. Then curate and organize from there.

    Just make sure once you have it on your external drive that you are also backing up that external drive to Time Machine or online. You don't want to go without a backup when it comes to anything -- but especially pictures!

Comments Closed.