Difficulty Backing Up 2012 MacBook Pro and inability to move photos out of the old iPhoto app to the newer Photos app

Hello.

I have an old MacBook Pro that was manufactured in 2012 and that is running on macOS Mojave. I am in the process of backing up the files from this laptop to 2 external hard drives, both of which are “WD My Passport for Mac.” I then want to transfer my files over to another, newer MacBook Pro that was manufactured in 2022.

I am having trouble in copying over to the external hard drives “iPhoto Library.photolibrary,” which corresponds to the iPhoto app. When I try to copy “iPhoto Library.photolibrary” to the external hard drives, my old laptop gives me an estimate that the transfer will take anywhere from 18 to 64 DAYS!!! I don’t understand why the transfer rate is so extremely slow???

At the same time, Time Machine cannot finish is preparing the backup to either of the external hard drives. Thus, I have not been able to backup my old laptop through Time Machine at all.

Earlier in the day, I was able to copy my various other files, such as those in the “Documents” folder, to the external hard drives without any troubles.

The iPhoto version that I have is 9.6.1 (910.42). The size of the iPhoto Library.photolibrary is 332.89 GB. The iPhoto App contains photos that were taken between 2006 and 2021. I used to backup my digital cameras and iPhones to iPhoto, saving pictures and videos in iPhoto to free up storage on my family’s digital cameras and iPhones. Thus, iPhoto stores many photos and videos that had to be deleted from my other devices. However, there are also many duplicate photos due to iPhoto not recognizing photos shared between iPhones as duplicates.

When Apple introduced the Photos app as the replacement for iPhoto many years ago, I did not migrate my photos in the iPhoto app over to the Photos app. This was because I used to like the format for photo editing in iPhoto and for grouping photo by date.

At this point, however, I would like to transfer my photos out of the old iPhoto app to the newer Photos app. Unfortunately, when I am in the Photos app, I am unable to select “iPhoto Library.photoslibrary” for import. I am also not able to drag photos from iPhoto to Photos.

I have got several problems going on. what can I do to resolve these issues?

I do not want to lose the photos, videos, and documents that Inhave saved on my 2012 MacBook Pro.

MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 15.4

Posted on Apr 13, 2025 3:35 AM

Top-ranking reply

Richard.Taylor

Level 6

17,065 points

Posted on Apr 13, 2025 8:28 AM

Time Machine must have its own volume. Make sure that the Time Machine volume has nothing else on it.

How is your external drive formatted? To avoid damaging the Photos Library an external drive must be formatted in either APFS format or Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format. Additionally, the drive can not have had Time Machine on it since it was formatted. There have been so many problems with using incompatible drives that the newest macOSs won't even allow a Library on a non-Mac formatted drive to open, since there is a chance of damaging the Photos database. See this:

Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support

If your drive is in a an incompatible format, stop running Photos with it immediately!

Well, I wrote that for Photos, not iPhoto, but it's not bad advice, even so. It may well help in copying files. You need to solve the copying problem, because to try any more things, you really need to back up those Libraries! I had thought that with Mojave, you could open an iPhotos Library in Photos. That you can't may mean there is a real problem with the iPhoto Library. So you need to back it up before messing with it.

Probably the best way to get an iPhoto Library into Photos is with the trusted 3rd party app PowerPhotos ($30.) PowerPhotos will do what it can to preserve the organization of your iPhoto Library.

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16 replies

MalloryCynRd Author

Level 1

10 points

Apr 17, 2025 1:52 PM in response to Richard.Taylor

I’m not sure what to expect out of the PowerPhotos app from the description within the App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/power-photo-photo-processing/id588622178.

My basic objective at this point in time is to extract photos and videos from iPhoto on a 2012 MacBook Pro with Mojave to be able to save the photos and videos on an external hard drive. In this process, I would like to eliminate duplicate photos and videos.

I am having significant issues with my external hard drives that I asked you about in another post earlier today (April 17, 2025). 2 of my external hard drives seem to have been damaged, because I am no longer able to get these external hard drive to appear in Finder on either of my laptops. This leaves me with one external hard drive - the WD My Passport from 2017 - that will connect to my 2012 MacBook Pro has a recent Time Machine backup and recent copies of my other files, except the photos in iPhoto.

I would appreciate it very much if you can follow up with any advice on how to handle the external hard drives issues.

It seems like the external hard drive issue is the top concern, because I need to have a storage device that I can use to back up and transfer photos before I can do much else.

Is there a some brand of external hard drive that I can buy new and then format it to be compatible with the 2012 MacBook Pro?

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Difficulty Backing Up 2012 MacBook Pro and inability to move photos out of the old iPhoto app to the newer Photos app