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iPhoto backup strategies for external drive

J

johnkerr48

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 6, 2007
2
0
A friend who bought a MacBook earlier this year has gotten quite enthusiastic about his computer and just bought a 500gb external drive for backups. The reason is that he is also an enthusiastic digital photographer, and has already done a backup of 6000 pictures onto DVDs. Last night we backed up his 29gb Pictures directory because it is easy to do. However, his main drive only has 26gb remaining unused, so there needs to be a strategy for the future pretty soon.
I've looked around on this forum and in iPhoto and don't see any way to get iPhoto to look at a separate drive for pictures. I'm thinking he would probably be happy always using the external drive for an archive, as I don't imagine he'll download photos to his laptop without being near his drive.
Anyone have any suggestions for a relatively new user? (I've been using Mac's since the 128, but this one is outside my comfort zone.) I don't think anything that involves getting into Terminal will be acceptable.
 
I keep all of my photos on an external and iPhoto finds them just fine. With the external on and mounted, open iPhoto while holding down the option key. You will be prompted to choose a library or create a new one. Create one on the external. Then just move your library from the internal to the external. Until you do this process again (holding option, choosing library), iPhoto will use the library on the external.

If/when space becomes a problem again, another external drive and another library could be added to the mix the same way.

Does that answer what you were asking?
 
That's perfect!

Thanks, Skybolt. I knew there would be something like that available. How did you find that out? Is it documented somewhere online?

John
 
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