It's very common to start running out of storage space on your Mac, especially if you are a photographer or a content creator who has to rely on the use. How To Copy Photos From A Mac To An External Hard Drive. Learn how to move files between your Chromebook and an external hard drive, thumbdrive or SD card. A PC or Finder on a Mac, you can view the drive's folders and files here. You can plug into your Mac your Seagate ExFAT external hard drive. And your Mac will see the drive. You’ll be able to copy and paste your files to that Seagate drive. Or drag and drop what ever you need to your Seagate drive. The other advantage of an ExFAT Seagate formatted external hard drive? Is a Windows PC understands ExFAT as well. Connect the external hard drive that you will use to copy the iPhoto Library. You should see it appear on your desktop. Open a new Finder window and click Pictures in the left sidebar.

Nov 25,2020 • Filed to: Photo Transfer • Proven solutions

A person can copy files by selecting them, then pressing the ctrl and c keys at the same time. To transfer data, begin by plugging the external hard drive into the appropriate port. Most computers will recognize the hard drive as a new device, and will scan it to determine what it is.

Photo collection has been considered as a source of keeping memories of various instances of our life, where users store a complete album of photos across a certain storage facility. As we all understand that recording and capturing memories require a camera or a certain device, we come across smartphones as a very contemporary addition to the wish-list of capturing memories.

Apart from capturing photos, it is quite important to maintain these files to sustain the memory of the storage drives. Thus, this article focuses on providing a detailed explanation of the available methods that would explain a user how to transfer photos from Mac to external hard drive.

Part 1. Why Should You (and Shouldn't) Transfer Photos to A Flash Drive

Flash drives are one of the most consumed storage facilities throughout the world. You would observe most people keeping their important data within flash drives, which allows them to share their data across other devices and keep a backup copy of these files to contain the situations where you either lose or have your data corrupted across a certain device. There are several advantages and disadvantages of considering a flash drive as a storage device in your photo transfer.

Pros:

• Flash Drives have enabled a portable environment where they have allowed the users to maintain the size and carry data with them without feeling any special load of it. As devices with larger storage and larger sizes require bigger containments, flash drives have brought a very extensive change in the perception.
• Technology has evolved and has been successful in creating flash drives that have storage spaces of 2TB, under similar portable sizes.
• The explicit system of flash drives has provided users with the ability to read and write across it countless times.
• Flash drives are known to present compatibility across every device.
• These storage devices have presented very reasonable prices as compared to the other storage devices.

Cons:

Move Photos From Iphone To External Hard Drive Mac

• As Flash drives have presented a portable feature, it has exponentially increased its chances of getting lost easily. Data can be lost easily due to the small sizes of flash drives.
• As the flash drives are universally accessible through any device with a USB port, they can be easily corrupted due to an existing virus, malware, or other malicious programs within the existing system.
• Even though you can rewrite data across a flash drive countless times, there is still a limit to which it can be rewritten.

Part 2. How to Transfer Photos from Mac to the External Hard Drive

If you are having a Mac and an active Photo Library across it, it can be easily transferred across an external hard drive. The major reasons for initiating such procedures is to present the fact that the device requires space for maintaining the environment of the machine and keep a high-performance protocol throughout the time.

Thus, you need to keep in mind that the transfer of photos is an important process the requires perfect execution with no data loss. When it comes to sharing data from a Mac to an external hard drive, you need to look over the detailed guide shown as follows.

Step 1 Connect the external hard drive with your Mac and format the drive. You should consider using the similar 'filesystem' format that is present on the internal hard drive.

Step 2 Once you are done with formatting the drive, you need to open up a 'Finder' window and verify the successful connection of the storage device. It can be observed across the left panel that opens up on your Mac screen.

Step 3 Search for 'Pictures' in the similar panel window. If it is not present in the panel, you need to access 'Finder's Preferences' and access 'Sidebar' from the top of the new window. In the list that you observe, check the option of 'Pictures' to add it to the panel.

Step 4 After opening 'Pictures,' right-click in the 'Photo Library' icon and tap on 'Get info' in the drop-down menu. It is to check whether the file space is enough to fit in the complete hard drive.

Step 5 Drag the folder and drop it into the storage device icon present on the 'Finder' window. It would successfully get transferred in a certain period of time.

Step 6 Once it elapses, holds the 'Options' key on your Mac and open the Photos app.

Step 7 Tap on 'Other Library' and locate the external device address. In the application, open its 'Preferences' and lead towards the 'General' settings to select the option of 'Use as System Photo Library.' Turn iCloud back on for your Photos app from the System Preferences and disconnect your hard drive to conclude.

Part 3. Tips about Transferring Photos from Mac

Apart from looking over these tools and methods, there are several techniques that can be adapted to transfer photos from Mac. One method involves using a third-party tool for such purposes. dr.fone – Phone Manager presents a perfect environment for the management of files across your Mac.

To transfer photos from your iPhone to Mac, you should consider dr.fone for the following reasons.

dr.fone - Phone Manager (iOS)

Safely Transfer Photos from Mac to External Hard Drive with dr.fone

Copy Pictures To External Drive

• Allows transfer and management of media files and other data.
• Backs up data easily on the computer and restores.
• Transfer files among different smartphones.
• Compatible across thousands of Android devices, all latest models of iPhone and iOS versions.

To understand its simple and efficient function, you need to look over the guide declared as follows.

Step 1Launch Platform

Download and install the platform to launch on your Mac. Once launched, select the 'Phone Manager' tool to proceed.

Step 2Connect device and Select Photos

Connect your iOS device and establish a successful connection. Tap on 'Photos' from the toolbar on the top and select the photos you wish to export.

Step 3Export Files

Once selected, you can easily export the files on your PC after selecting a certain location.

Step 4 Transfer from Mac

Connect your external hard drive with the Mac and copy the folder that is saved over the location and paste it across the drive.

Another method that can be considered under such cases is by backing up the iCloud Photo Library across an external cloud service that keeps a backup of these files. For this, you need to follow these simple methods.

Step 1 Open your 'Photos' app on the Mac and tap on 'Photos' in its menu to select 'Preferences' from the drop-down menu that protrudes over clicking it.

Step 2 On the new window, tap the 'iCloud' button to lead to a new list of options. Select 'Download Originals to this Mac' for backing up data across the iCloud Photo Library in full resolution.

Conclusion

This article has presented a comprehensive and detailed guide on how to transfer photos from Mac to an external hard drive with ease.

It is quite likely that you store digital photos on your Mac computer. If you are like most users, your photo library is an ever-expanding entity as you regularly add new images and never get around to deleting any of the older ones. After a while, the storage demands of your library can start to add up and cause lack of space issues on your internal storage device.

Professional photographers and videographers are even more prone to running into a storage issue due to the size of their Photo libraries. We are making the assumption that you know how to move your photos from your iPhone to your Mac, and that your photo library is on your computer’s internal hard drive.

There is a simple solution that can be used whether you earn your living with your photos or just like to take a lot of pictures. What you need to do is to move photos from your Mac to an external hard drive.

We are going to show you how to do that, as well as point you toward a few externals storage devices that will work very well as repositories for your photo libraries. Near the end of the article, we will show you how to recover photos that may be accidentally deleted from your external hard drive.

How to Move Your Photos Library to an External Hard Drive

Let’s take a look at how to transfer photos from a Mac to an external hard drive. As with any major modification that you will be making to your computer or storage system, we recommend that you make sure that you have a good backup of your device before proceeding.

This adds a little time to the whole process, but in the event that something goes wrong during the data move, you will be glad that you have that backup. Just imagine all of your photos gone for good.

Steps to Move your Photos Library to an External Drive

1. Attach your external hard drive to your Mac.
2. 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.
3. Open a Finder window and verify that your new storage device is correctly attached. You should see it listed under Locations in the Finder Window.
4. From the left panel in the Finder window, select Pictures. If Pictures is not an option, go into Finder’sPreferences> Sidebar and check the box Pictures.
   
5. Right click on the Photos library icon and select Get Info. Verify that you have enough free space for the library on the external drive.
   
6. Drag and drop the Photos library icon onto the hard drive icon either in Finder or on your Desktop.
   
7. Wait for the copy to complete. The elapsed time will vary based on the size of your library.
8. When finished copying, hold down the option key ⌥ while launching the Photos app.
9. Click Other Library and navigate to the new location on the external device.
10. In the Photos app, click on Preferences> General and select ‘Use as System Photo Library’. This is mandatory if you use iCLoud with your Photo library.
11. Go to System Preferences> iCloud > Photos > Options. Select iCloud Photo Library to turn iCloud back on for your Photos.
12. Disconnect your external hard drive and verify that all of your photos are indeed in the Photo library on the device. Once you are certain that the process is completed, you can drag the Photo library on your Mac to the Trash.
13. If you want to immediately free up hard disk space, empty your Trash to permanently delete the photos.

At the end of this procedure, your external hard drive will contain all of the photos from your Photos library that were previously stored on your Mac. You have also freed up all of the space that they previously occupied. Nice work.

Apple Photos Library External Drive

3 Best External Hard Drives for Storing Photos

There are many fine external storage devices from which to choose to hold your iPhoto libraries. Here are three of them.

Western Digital My Passport

You can obtain this external drive in a variety of colors and sizes ranging from 1TB to 4TB. It is self-powered and features password protection and hardware encryption. WD My Passport is compatible with USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 interfaces. It includes WD backup software that can be set to automatically protect your data on a timed schedule. It comes formatted for Windows but can be formatted for use on a Mac.

G-Technology G-Drive Mobile SSD R-Series

This drive is available in sizes up to 2TB and since it is an SSD drive, provides enhanced durability over traditional hard drives. It features high-speed data transfer and is shock and vibration resistant. A good choice if you plan on using your drive in challenging environments.

Samsung T5 SSD

Here is another SSD drive that comes in sizes from 250GB up to 2TB. It features a distinctive aluminum casing and is extremely portable, weighing in at 51 grams. Fast transfer speeds are a hallmark of Samsung SSDs and this model is no exception.

Tips to Recover Deleted Photos from an External Hard Drive on Mac

So now that you have all of your valuable photos on your external hard drive, what are you going to do if you accidentally delete some of those special memories? You might just be doing some housekeeping on your storage device and inadvertently send some photos to the Trash, which you then delete. Maybe you even formatted the drive by mistake.

Don’t panic. Here is a great way to recover deleted photos from an external storage device that is attached to a Mac.

1. Download Disk Drill hard drive data recovery software for Mac. You can download it for free and use it to preview recoverable photos before spending a cent on the application.
   
   Data recovery for free
   Your Companion for Deleted Files Recovery
2. Install the program and supply it with your Administrator’s password.
3. Attach the removable storage device to your Mac.
4. Start Disk Drill and select the external hard drive from the list of discovered devices.
5. Click the “Recover” button and allow Disk Drill to scan your external drive for files that can be recovered. You will be presented with a list of the files that the tool can restore.
6. At this point, you can recover these files by purchasing a licensed version of Disk Drill.

We hope this article has been helpful in showing you how to move your iPhoto libraries to an external hard drive. If you save a lot of photos on your computer, there is a good chance you will eventually want to free up the space they occupy for other things. Now you know how to accomplish that task.