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skasol

macrumors 6502
Original poster
when I try to export my iphoto photos to back them up on a harddrive. everytime I do this, it gives me an error saying that unable to create volume of the folder etc. please help I want to do a fresh install of snow leopard and I don't wanna lose my 4,000 pictures.

Thank you in advance.
 

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when I try to export my iphoto photos to back them up on a harddrive. everytime I do this, it gives me an error saying that unable to create volume of the folder etc. please help I want to do a fresh install of snow leopard and I don't wanna lose my 4,000 pictures.

Thank you in advance.

Are you Exporting from iPhoto? Your error message seems odd. Like it's trying to create a disk volume instead of just moving pictures. Try again and make sure you have enough space on the backup drive.

Dale
 
I have a 500gb harddrive which is only being used for time machine and now this back up. The pictures are only 21gb. Another question if I do a fresh install of snow leopard can I restore photos from time machine back up?
 
MacBookPro Virgin

I am experiencing the exact same problem. In addition when I try to open a photo in iPhoto the image does not appear, I get an exclamation mark. When I imported the photos from the camera I acknowledged the option to delete from camera!!!! Now I can see the thumbnail but cannot work with the pictures. aaaaaarrrrrhhhh!
 
I just tried to export my iPhoto library and it told me that I can only export 200 photos at a time. I'm using iPhoto 7 but maybe there is a similar problem with your version.
 
If you have a time machine backup you should be okay. You can also copy it manually if you are familiar enough with terminal command line. An example would be:

rsync --size-only --verbose --progress --stats --recursive --times --links /Users/pigbat/Pictures/* "/Volumes/My Book/backups/iMac/Pictures"

The directory you're after is /Users/(username)/Pictures/iPhoto Library/Originals.
 
Thanx Chappers, but believe it or not, I am unable to export a single file!

I have only just bought my first apple, MBP-2.5Ghz-4GRAM, and I want out already.........😡
 
thanks for the info pigbat, but thats a bit outside my level of ability on apple stuff. All keep an eye out on ebay for a macbookpro on special offer

:apple:my arse
 
Rather than trying to export the photos, I'd simply copy the library to the external like this: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1229

Then everything stays just like it should and if you need to use that file from the backup, all you have to do is reverse the action, and put it back on your internal drive.
 
I'm also having this problem. I have exported about 5,000 pictures of 24,000 and now I get this message.
 
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