How to copy your Photos Library and keep its organization A reader wants to have a copy of his Photos Library on an external drive that looks like what he sees in the app. How to transfer your iPhone or Mac Photo library to an external drive. By AppleInsider Staff Wednesday, January 31, 2018, 04:40 pm PT (07:40 pm ET) Storing an entire collection of photographs in.
Jan 23, 2017 You have to select all, then setup your external Hard Drive and browse to that location. Then click the export and wait for the copy to finish. You can copy referenced files into your photo library so they’re easier to back up and are automatically stored in iCloud if iCloud Photos is turned on. In the Photos app on your Mac, select the files that you want to copy into the photo library. Choose File Consolidate.
Photos User Guide
Even if you use iCloud Photos, it’s important that you always back up your library locally using one of the following methods:
Use Time Machine: After you set up Time Machine, it automatically backs up the files on your Mac. If you ever lose the files in your Photos library, you can restore them from the Time Machine backup. For more information about setting up Time Machine, see Back up your files with Time Machine.
WARNING: If a Photos library is located on an external drive, don’t use Time Machine to store a backup on that external drive. The permissions for your Photos library may conflict with those for the Time Machine backup.
Manually copy your library to an external storage device: Drag the Photos library (by default in the Pictures folder on your Mac) to your storage device to create a copy.
If you have more than one photo library, be sure to back them all up.
Important: If any of your image files are stored outside your photo library, those files (known as referenced files) aren’t backed up when you back up your library. Be sure to back up those files separately. To make it easier to back up all your image files at once, you can consolidate referenced files into your library. See Change where Photos stores your files.