Mac/iPhoto Question
 

Quick Mac question -

I want to free up some disk space on my MacBook by moving the iPhoto library off to an external drive. 95% of the photos in that library are in the iPhoto library on the desktop Mac, so I don't need them on the MacBook. But just in case I ever want the other 5%, I don't want to simply wipe out the MacBook's iPhoto library. I want that library on the external drive, accessible by iPhoto later.

So, I plan to connect the external drive to the MacBook, drag the iPhoto library folder to the external drive, disconnect the external drive, open iPhoto on the MacBook, select/delete all the photos.

Make sense? I'm never quite sure about how iPhoto stores and organizes pictures, and am worried that I might corrupt the organization in a way that makes the pictures on the external drive unreadable by iPhoto in future.

You should be okay if you do that.

YOU MIGHT CONSIDER:

start up your macbook in TARGET DISK MODE; hook it you to your desktop computer with a firewire cable.

Open up the iPhoto on your desktop mac, and select "import" and point it to the iPhoto library on your macbook.

It will prompt you whether or not you want to import "duplicate" photos, and select no, and click the checkbox to "apply to all duplicates". Then, it will import that 5% of photos from your macbook into your desktop mac, and you don't have to sort through them.

Then you'll have ALL the photos on the desktop computer iPhoto . . . . . . .

But your way is fine, too, for sure.

IMO, I would be very careful moving around the iPhoto library folder!

I would recommend using import and export functions to do the job. Your fears about messing up the file/organization system are correct.

edit: Maybe I overreacted! See Apple for help here: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1229 As Gogar said, your moving the folder method is fine.

Best,

Kurt

Yeah move it.

My wife has her libraries spread amongst multiple drives cause she shots way too much.