Storing photos on external hard drive

[Mrbarlow]

Hello all;
Noob question;
I have a huge catch of photos that I am currently scanning and would like to store digitaly, numbering in the thousands. Right now I'm using iphoto to store the ones I have scanned, but I have only a macbook with an 80gb hardrive, and an external drive of 320gb. Evantually i am going to run out of room. I am wondering what is the best way to transfer the photos to the external drive, so that I can delete the current photos from my internal drive to free up space, then later, when I have added more photos, transfer those to the external drive, without having to have all of them in the iphoto library photo catch? I am concerned that if they are all stored in the iphoto library folder on the external drive, then eventurlly, this folder will be too big to reload on my computer. Also, when I erased the photos already stored in the external drive from the internal, then added new ones, then tried to put those in the external drive from iphoto, the external asks me if I want to overwrite the iphoto library it has stored because the folder names are the same. I would like to be able to have several iphoto library files on the external drive, so they don't all go into one huge file. Does that make sense? If anyone has any experience with organizing a huge catch of photos, I would love to hear it, as this is relatively new to me. Thanks.

 

[skybolt]

Create another iPhoto library by holding down the option key when you launch iPhoto. Tell it to create a new library on the external drive. Then drag your iPhoto library to the external. Now all your photos will be on the external, and you can start again with the library that is on your internal. Hold down the option key when starting, and this time "choose" a library -- the internal. There are complete instructions on the Apple website in the knowledge base.

 

[FujiRoyale]

What if the Hard drive does not show up

Hello,

Thanks for the tip regarding creating a new library by holding the cntrl button while launching i-photo.

I have an iomega Hard drive that runs via USB, Firewire, etc etc. The hard drive shows up in finder, and on my desktop but not as any option in i-photo.

Is there an option that I need to turn on for i-photo?

thanks