How do I manually transfer all of my computer files to an external hard drive?

best external hard drive imac image

Jase

I just got an external hard drive and i wanted to know if there was a way to view all of my files and just drag them onto the hard drive. I have an iMac with a very small amount of hard drive space left, so i want to manually transfer ALL of my data to the 1TB hard drive. How do i do that?

Answer
This is called cloning. You will most likely need cloning software from the manufacturer of your iMac, or else you may be forced to look for alternatives which may cost money, or at least time finding free alternatives.






You can move most of your data over using copy/paste + shift (or is it CTRL not sure which.)

How do I move groups of photos from iPhoto to an external hard drive?

Julie W.

I have over 3000 photos on iPhoto 6.0.6 and would like to store them on a new external hard drive for permeant storage as my iphoto application is getting noticeably slow. How do I do this? Next I want to remove the existing photos from iPhoto. What is the best way to do this? My system is an iMac running Snow Leopard 10.6.4 - Thanks, Julie

Answer
Here are the steps to make the copy of your iPhoto library.

Quit iPhoto if it is running.
Make sure your external drive is connected and turned on. In the Finder, the external drive will show as an orange drive icon in the left pane.
Open two Finder windows and position them one on top of the other.
In the top Finder window, start at your Home folder (the one with the icon of the house and your user name by it) and select the Pictures folder. Inside the Pictures folder you should see a folder called iPhoto Library.
In the bottom Finder window, select your external drive. That is where we are copying the iPhoto Library to.
Select the iPhoto Library folder from the top Finder window. Drag it to the bottom Finder window. This will start a copy process. How long the copy takes depends on how large your iPhoto library is, but it should take at least several minutes.
Now we need to tell iPhoto that you have moved the iPhoto library and where to look for it.

Tell iPhoto '06 & '08 to look for the Library

Hold down the Option key on the keyboard and open iPhoto. You will see a dialog box like the one on the right.
Click the Choose Library. You will get a standard Open dialog window.
Click on your external hard drive icon (the orange one) in the left pane. You should then see the iPhoto Library folder that you copied earlier.
Select the iPhoto Library folder and click the Open button. iPhoto will open and you should see your photos.

Tell iPhoto '09 to choose the Library

If iPhoto is open, quit it.
Go to the Pictures folder of your Home folder.
Rename "iPhoto Library" to "iPhoto Library.old". (To rename a file, click the file name once. Pause a second, then click the file name again. The file name will be highlighted in light blue and you can type to rename the file.)
Open iPhoto. You will see a dialog box like the one on the right. If you don't see the dialog box, click the iPhoto icon on your Dock. This dialog box likes to hide behind other windows for some reason.
There will be two items listed in the scroll box, one called "iPhoto Library" and one called "iPhoto Library.old". Select "iPhoto Library". (This is the one that you moved to the external hard drive.)
Click the Choose button.
iPhoto will open and you should see your photos.

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