You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

JulesAChE Author

Level 1

12 points

Can not open a photo library on an external drive even though it opens when copied to hard drive

Is there any way to fix not being able to open a photo library located on an external drive?

I bought a SeaGate 4TB External Drive because I was running out of storage on my MacBook Pro and found out that it was possible to place my photo library in an external drive and so free up space. I followed the instructions given by Apple, and then tried the same for my iPhone backups, and it was all working out until I took the External memory out and tried placing it back in to test if it was successful.

Well, it didn't work out; whenever I opened the Photos app a message popped up saying repair was needed to open the photo library, but even as I clicked on accept, it kept asking the same thing over and over again and the progress bar wasn't moving from the 0%. I tried erasing it and formatting it in another format, but nothing seems to work, I even tried erasing it from another Mac to see if maybe it was due to something happening to Disk Utilities.

I don't know what to do, I'm desperate since I spent 5 hours working on it and everything went to the garbage because of this, and since I spent 200 bucks on the external memory, I really need it to get working

MacBook Air

Posted on Jul 29, 2019 1:03 AM

Top-ranking reply

léonie

Level 10

197,291 points

Posted on Jul 29, 2019 2:07 AM

Can you enable the "Ignore Ownership on this volume" for the external drive, as described in this document: Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support

If it is not possible to enable Ignore Ownership in the Info for the drive, there is a problem with the external volume. There may be software installed on the drive, preventing this, the file system format may be wrong, or you may have saved backups on the drive. If you are storing Time Machine backups on the drive, the permissions will be in conflict with Photos Library.

What is the file system format of your external drive?

View in context

Can not open a photo library on an external drive even though it opens when copied to hard drive

Similar questions