RogerP

I created several libraries in Photo’s to handle volume, to separate my library by main category and to be able to create multiple back-up’s , so one for family, one for my outdoor/travel and a test-library when I want to experiment or demonstrate Photo’s as I give presentations/workshop for Photo’s. You can easily use a library from an external drive attached with usb-3, thunderbolt. or eSata, (these spec’s I do need as I use RAW for my Picture, just shooting jpeg usb-2 might be sufficient) , or even usb-stick (preferably usb-3, watch the read/write specifications).  Sometimes when I am “on the road” for a longer period (2-6 weeks) I create a library with the name of that trip on my macbook, mostly meant as a back-up for my SD-card and sometimes to do some pre-editing and already distribute/share some pictures . Afterwards I simply export/import the pictures, as Photo’s itself don’t allow you to merge libraries. (There are tools that do, but I don’t have any experience with them)

I don’t use TM as a back-up, don’t forget that TM isn’t an archiving system ! 

I had some flaws in using TM, not being able to retrieve my foto’s, and I experienced delay when doing heavy editing during the back-up of TM. So I exclude my Photo-libraries.  In stead I make different back-ups of my different libraries on to multiple external harddrives (Formatted as HSF+). Backing-up is as simple as dragging your Photo-library using the Finder to an external connected drive. In that way you save the complete structure and edits of your Photo-library.

 Well, that’s my story. HtH

Ben

Hi RogerP,

I’m sorry for the amount of info, I overlooked the fact that you just were starting with both the Mac and Photografy. Nevertheless some of the info might turn out to be relevant.

Don’t hesitate to ask additional questions and above all to enjoy the Mac and photography -;)

Hello Roger,

I will try to answer in brief:

Every computer system (Windows, Mac or other) uses a file-structure system to be able to manage the control of that system , the disks and the data on a hard-disk. Mac uses a structure called HSF+. The disks in any computer are “pre-formatted”. When you buy an external hard-disk and you would like to use it as a MAC-harddrive you need to either buy a disk that is pre-formatted as a Mac-drive (HSF+) or, as most harddrive are based on one of the many Windows formats, you need to re-format such a drive as a Mac-drive. When you want the external drive to support Photo-libraries (that contains a database-sructure inside) the drive needs to be in the HSF+ structure.

You can do that using Disk-utility, which is a standard utility installed on every Mac. (It resides in the utilities folder within the programs-folder). I think it is best to use the Help-function from that program to figure out how to deal with that. It’s quite simple.

You may find good information on several subjects at Apple support: https://support.apple.com

To my knowledge there are no specific sites handling this subject. You cloud of course do a web-search, or search sites like Macworld: https://www.macworld.com

HtH

Ben