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Saving your iPhoto library before re-installing

M

mrogers

macrumors member
Original poster
Apr 11, 2011
38
1
I want to re-instal OSX on my macbook from scratch and basically will be wiping my entire macbook clean and starting from scratch. I've done this once before, with no problems, as I only had a few files that I needed to save and transfer over once I was finished.

However, now I have a huge iPhoto library that I do not want to lose. Is there any way to save that. Is there a specific folder that I can save to my USB-- like a folder somewhere that contains all the iPhoto images, or is there a better way?
 
Thanks! So if I get that folder to my new mac, all the iPhoto photos will be there?

Do you have any advice on how to get it there. It is pretty big (12 GB) and my biggest USB drive is 8 GIGS and all the DVD-Rs I have are about 4 GIGS.

Is there a way to split it up maybe?
 
The iPhoto Library is just a standard folder that looks like a special item in Finder. If you right-click it you can select "Show package contents" or you can cd into it in Terminal. You can eg move everything except Originals, then back up the contents of Originals separately, then put everything back afterwards. That is a bit awkward and maybe error prone, but is doable.

If you have been syncing your photos to an iPod or iPhone, there'll be an iPod Photo Cache folder that can be safely removed. This can free up a few GB. It would be recreated the next time you sync to the iPod/iPhone.

I would recommend you have a back up of your photos anyway. Your hard drive is going to fail sometime - getting a large external drive or backing up on DVDs is better than nothing, but offsite cloud storage would be best.
 
Awesome, Thank you so much!

One more question. I was trying to do the same with my Firefox bookmarks and I think I messed up. Now my Firefox has defaulted and it seems to be new (no history, no bookmarks!) I don't know how that happened. All I did was go to the Firefox folder under Applications Support and I dragged it to the desktop. Then I put that folder onto a USB drive.

Now the bookmarks on my current computer are cleared, and the bookmarks.html file is pretty much empty. And now that I look on my USB drive I don't see a bookmarks.html file anywhere in the Firefox folder. I just see the folder Bookmarkbackups but everything inside it is a .json file. There is nothing else at all in the file on my USB that says bookmarks in the firefox folder.

Please tell me Firefox has been backing up automatically because I would hate to have lost all those bookmarks
 
Firefox does not backup, as far as I know.
When you dragged the Mozilla/Firefox folder from the Macintosh HD / Users / YOU / Library / Application Support onto the Desktop, you removed that folder from the Application Support folder, thus it got re-created upon a restart of Firefox.
But why the information has gone from the folder you dragged onto the Desktop is beyond me.
 
What if I drag it back from the desktop into the Application Support folder?

Also what about the file that was put on my USB drive. Any chance the bookmarks are still there?
 
Now under profiles there are two accounts both are .default files. One says it was created today, and the other says it was created 2 years ago which is the date the original Firefox was installed. But when I click the bookmarks.html file within that folder nothing still shows up.
 
Phew, Ok I put it back into the Applications folder and had it replace the new one, and the original Firefox has returned with bookmarks and all.

Now can anyone help me with the proper way to transfer just the bookmarks to a new Mac? I don't care for any of the other settings, preferences etc. I just want the bookmarks.

Thanks in advance.
 
I'm no expert, but if you are moving to a new mac, have you considered using Migration Assistant? If you do that, everything will look just like your old computer, but be on your new computer. It's pretty slick!

(You may have some reason not to do this, but I just thought I'd mention it.)

Miss Terri
 
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