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Photo Library not working

When I updated to Big Sur 11.5.1

Photo Library does not open. I keep my Photo Library on an external hard-drive and doing some research discovered that there has been a change in the format requirements of external hard-drives for Macs. Is this correct?

How would be the best way to remedy the situation?

Apparently. I would need to buy a new external hard-drive and copy my Photo library to newly formatted hard-drive. Is this correct?

If so.

What format should be used on the new external hard-drive?

Will transferring the Photo-library to newly formatted hard-drive work? If the upgrade can't read the Photo Library and open it, will it be able to move the library from one external hard rive to another?

Can someone please advise on how best to remedy this situation.

Posted on Aug 4, 2021 2:12 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Aug 4, 2021 2:35 AM

First, make sure that Photos has "Full Disk Access" in System Preferences->Security & Privacy->Privacy:


Second, start Photos while holding down the Option key and select your library in the external drive.

It should work.

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3 replies

Aug 4, 2021 3:04 AM in response to Glen South Africa

Photos library should be saved on case-insensitive MacOS Extended (HDD or maybe APFS although it is slower) or APFS (SSD) volume. In the past I have successfully saved and shared it at /Users/Shared but then there is a risk that other users might open it at the same time that might corrupt it so now I save it at the default ~/Pictures or on an external volume. External volumes should have "Ignore ownership" ON but this should be the default anyway.


Non-Mac formats like FAT might very well corrupt the library beyond repair although imported files might be laboriously salvaged from the library package.

Photo Library not working

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