How to Backup Photos of iPhone/iPad to External USB Disk

Paul Xiong
1 min readJan 11, 2024

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Not iCloud and Google Photos, Not 3rd party’s app, just Apple’s Photos APP.

Copy / Move “Photos Library.photoslibrary”

  1. Connect the External USB Drive:
    Plug in your external USB drive into one of the USB ports on your MacBook.
  2. Open Finder:
    Open Finder on your MacBook. Locate your Photos Library.
    Navigate to your current Photos library. The default location is usually in your Pictures folder.
  3. Copy or move the Photos Library to the External Drive:
    Select the Photos library (usually named “Photos Library.photoslibrary”) and copy/move it to the external USB drive.
    Wait for the Copy Process to Complete:Depending on the size of your library, the copy process may take some time. Allow it to complete.

Import Photos

Open Photos.app with the Library on the External Drive:

  • To open Photos using the library on the external drive, press and hold the “Option” key on your keyboard and then launch the Photos app.
  • This will prompt you to choose a library. Select the library on the external USB drive.
  • Connect iPhone/iPad, don’t forget select “trust”
  • Import photos.

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Paul Xiong
Paul Xiong

Written by Paul Xiong

Predicting the next word (token) is what powers ChatGPT, while predicting the next photo (embedding) forms the foundation of ImageGPT.

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