How To Transfer Photos On Mac To External Hard Drive

Prepare your 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. Double-click the external hard drive's icon to view the files on the drive. Use Finder Search Tool Click Finder on the Dock to launch a new Finder window, then locate the photos to transfer to. Connect the external hard drive to your mac using a USB cable and wait until the hard drive successfully connected to your computer. (Name of the drive should appear on your Mac screen). Step 2: Open “Finder”, then locate the files to move to external hard 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). However, you can't move your library to a disk that's used for Time Machine backups. Find out how to check the format of your external storage device.

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

  1. Quit Photos.
  2. In the Finder, go to the external drive where you want to store your library.
  3. In another Finder window, find your library. The default location is Users > [username] > Pictures, and it's named Photos Library.
  4. 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 the triangle button , then make sure the 'Ignore ownership on this volume' checkbox is selected. If it's not selected, click the lock button to unlock it, enter an administrator name and password, then select the checkbox.*

  5. After the move is finished, double-click Photos Library in its new location to open it.
  6. If you use iCloud Photo Library, designate this library as the System Photo Library.
Export

Delete original library to save space

Export Pictures To External Drive

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.

How To Transfer Photos On Mac To External Hard Drive

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:

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

Photos uses this library until you open a different one.

Learn more

How To Transfer Photos On Mac To External Hard Drive Hard Drive

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

How To Transfer Photos On Mac To External Hard Drive Best Buy

* 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.