Photos app on macOS Catalina - Hard drive format and back up options/advice/suggestions

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Level 1

8 points

Photos app on macOS Catalina - Hard drive format and back up options/advice/suggestions

I am trying to find an effective solution to backing up my photos. Currently I use portable hard drives (formatted in exFAT) as I rely on them to be accessible both through my Mac and collaborators PCs - one hard drive stays home with the back ups and the 'master' comes with.

I have been told recently that the Photo's application on Mac is not compatible with exFAT (I currently have several of my photos libraries on a hard drive formatted in exFAT and was in the process of moving other photos libraries currently on my Mac over to this hard drive). So really I have several questions...

Can you copy a photos library over to a portable hard drive (and if so , what is the best way to do this?);
are my photos libraries on my exFAT hard drive unstable and should I be looking at removing them asap? (some background on this would be brilliant!) and;
if this is the case and photos is not compatible with exFAT (or at least will eventually corrupt) is my best option to purchase two additional hard drives in a format capable of supporting the photos libraries?

If any one has suggested formats or ways they back up their photos with their Mac photos app (or other applications), I would love your advice! Thank you!

MacBook

Posted on Jun 23, 2020 11:56 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

léonie

Level 10

197,321 points

Jun 24, 2020 11:51 AM in response to gregaem

Apple states that a Photos Library needs to be on a volume with the format APFS or MacOS Extended (Journaled), see:

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

The reason is, that storing the library on a volume with a different file system format may result in data loss because of file naming errors.

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Answer 2

STCav

Level 2

428 points

Jun 24, 2020 9:09 AM in response to gregaem

I'm using Catalina 10.15.5 with Photos 5.0. I'm backing up with Time Machine for the whole system disk and with Carbon Copy Cloner. I use the latter for occasional clones of the system disk and a daily scheduled back up of the Pictures Folder, which includes my Photos System Library.

In setting up the latter I was after something from which I would be able to restore individual pictures from within a backed-up Library. As I understand it, Time Machine can only restore the entire Library, which is not always required.

In terms of disk formats, my system disk is APFS, the Time Machine is Mac OS Extended (Journaled), (which is the only thing Time Machine will run on, I believe) and the Carbon Copy Cloner disk is the same because that's what CCC advised, if I remember correctly. The system disk and the clones are on SSDs and the back-ups are HDDs.

I have no real idea about whether mine is a good approach, but I've reasoned it through using the plentiful advice and information on this forum.

I have no need of FAT32 and whenever I buy a new disk I immediately format it using the Mac, so I can't advise you about that.

As to your question in the first bullet point, yes you can and the simplest way is (when Photos is not running) to drag and drop it using Finder. This moves the entire Library file, with edits, Keywords, Albums, etc.

Stephen

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Answer 3

gregaem Author

Level 1

8 points

Jun 24, 2020 11:55 PM in response to STCav

Thank you so much for your advice STCav, I've heard mixed reviews about Time Machine, so opted to stick with my HDDs making manual copies, but CCC looks great and is definitely something I'll look into it!

My next step will be transferring to SSDs when I can afford the switch from HDDs!

Seems as though my only real option is to be using the format APFS or Mac OS Extended (Journaled) that you're working in and as Léonie mentioned below.

Thanks again, I appreciate you sharing your experience!

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