The trick is that it takes far shorter time if you copy 45 GB as a single file into the USB media (because you avoid tens of thousands slower filesystem calls / writes onto the USB media).
Try this method to reduce the copying to a "mere" few hours:
1) Tar up the iPhoto Library. Prefer tar to compression as your JPEG and MOV are already highly compressed, so doing compression would be a waste.
Open up the Terminal in Mac OS. Use "tar -cf your_name.tar your_original_iPhoto_Library".
This took a long enough time for my iPhoto Library, maybe 1 hour.
2) Copy the your_name.tar into the USB. As one big binary blob, the copying is much faster. Takes about 20 mins in my case.
3) At the destination mac, just untar it in a directory of your choosing.
Open up the Terminal. Use "tar -xf your_name.tar". This took less than 1 hour.
4 comments:
Use the App iPhoto Library Manager. Mount one of your Macs in target mode if that is the source, or connect the external drive if that is the case. The create a iPhoto library by holding down the option key on launch at the destination Mac. Title it the same as the one that is your iPhoto Library source. Now have iPhoto Library Manager import to the new empty library at the destination or merge to another library if that is the case. Works very fast and efficient. Catches duplicates also.
Thx for the comment :) I actually have the iPhoto Library Manager and I encountered the SLOOWWW problem when I copied the iPhoto Library to my external hard disk (so that iPhoto Library Manager can merge it at the destination Mac). Haven't tried mounting the source Mac in target mode though.
I followed Paul's advice and it worked amazingly. iPhoto Library Manager is free, fast and convenient. I did the transfer from an iMac to a MBP using target disk. IT started rather slow and I feared it would take a long time but I made a copy of my 127 GB library in less than an hour.
Hi i just downloaded the app but am a little lost, any chance for a step by step? To get my iPhoto library saved onto an external drive but it says it will take 1200 days lol
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