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Can you move photo library to a partitioned Time Machine backup disk?

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


On the page above it says

However, you can't move your library to a disk that's used for Time Machine backups.

Is this true even if the disk is partitioned?


I'm wanting to move the photos library off of my wife's MacBook Air because she does not have room anymore on her HDD. We would use iCloud but I found out that it's just used to sync across devices and not really for offline storage which means the photos would still be on her computer.

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 10.14

Posted on Nov 5, 2020 5:01 PM

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Posted on Nov 7, 2020 2:52 AM

How are you planning to make backup copies of the photos library? You really need a backup of the Photos library on a separate drive. Sooner or later the Time Machine volume will fail, and then you will need at least one backup of the Photos Library, or you will have lost all photos. Having to pay for data recovery from a damaged disk will be more expensive than buying all hard disks in pairs, right from the beginning - one disk for the data, one disk for the backup copy of the data. The result of data recovery is uncertain.


As OT pointed out - Your wife could use iCloud Photos to keep all photos in iCloud and use "Optimise Mac Storage" to save some storage on the MacBook Air, but she would still need a backup copy of her photos library or at least the photos in the library to be able to recover accidentally deleted photos. iCloud Photos does not offer an archival history to recover older photos that we already have deleted. (iCloud Photos Library: Keep regular backups of your iCloud Photos Library - Apple Community). The original photos photos can be backed up by exporting them to the Time Machine disk, but backing up an optimised Photos Library is a lot of work: How to back up an optimized iCloud Photos Library - Apple Community


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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Nov 7, 2020 2:52 AM in response to hyrum0

How are you planning to make backup copies of the photos library? You really need a backup of the Photos library on a separate drive. Sooner or later the Time Machine volume will fail, and then you will need at least one backup of the Photos Library, or you will have lost all photos. Having to pay for data recovery from a damaged disk will be more expensive than buying all hard disks in pairs, right from the beginning - one disk for the data, one disk for the backup copy of the data. The result of data recovery is uncertain.


As OT pointed out - Your wife could use iCloud Photos to keep all photos in iCloud and use "Optimise Mac Storage" to save some storage on the MacBook Air, but she would still need a backup copy of her photos library or at least the photos in the library to be able to recover accidentally deleted photos. iCloud Photos does not offer an archival history to recover older photos that we already have deleted. (iCloud Photos Library: Keep regular backups of your iCloud Photos Library - Apple Community). The original photos photos can be backed up by exporting them to the Time Machine disk, but backing up an optimised Photos Library is a lot of work: How to back up an optimized iCloud Photos Library - Apple Community


Nov 6, 2020 12:21 PM in response to hyrum0

Yes, but you're playing with fire here as you've already been warned. A better solution would be to put it on this small, portable external SSD from Other World Computing (MacSales.com): OWC Envoy Pro mini



If you're accessing the TM drive wirelessly then that's another danger as dropouts while running a Photos library can damage the library.


Just some food for thought.

Can you move photo library to a partitioned Time Machine backup disk?

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