How to backup your iPhoto pictures on to an external USB drive

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If you’re like most people, you probably have thousands of memories as photos in your Photos app on your Mac. You’d like to find a way to copy them onto an external USB drive for safe keeping.

In order for this to be done, you have to make sure that you get an external USB drive large enough to handle the amount of photos (and videos) you have. Fortunately, these drives have come down in price considerably over the years, so that shouldn’t be a factor. The companies that make these drives manufacture them in different Gigabytes (GB) from 512GB on up. For an idea of the price, click here.

This article assumes that you have the correct USB drive for the task ahead. If you find that the USB drive cannot handle all of your photos, then perhaps you should consider purchasing an external USB or Firewire hard drive. They too have come down in price over the years, and can be your sole source of backup for your important files besides your photos.

With that said, here’s how to backup your photos and videos from your Mac.

Go into the Photos app on your Mac.
Click on the “Library” option to display all your photos.
Click on the first photo in that Library.
Now select [Command]+[A] for all photos.
Click [File] and then [Export].
For the sake of this demo, select “unmodified version” to export all photos in their unmodified form.
Now, Photos will ask you where you wish to save the photos. Select your external USB drive or external hard drive.
Click [OK]. The process should begin. The process will take a while depending on the amount of photos you have.
That’s it.

Bonus Tip:

There is a 2nd way to backup your Photos content, but this involves backing up the main Photo Data File that’s located in the Pictures Folder on your Mac, and may take up even more space than doing it the way described above.