How do I migrate my Aperture library from my primary HDD to an external drive?

Question

I have about 53GB of photos in my Aperture library which is stored on my internal HDD. I would like to move this library onto an external hard disk and continue to use Aperture without any loss of images, etc.

Is there anyway I can do this?

Answer 1

Yes you can, here are the steps:

• Connect your external disk
• Open Finder and go to <your home folder>/Pictures
• move the Aperture Library.aplibrary file to a location on your new disk
• Open Aperture and go to preferences ( from menu or by pressing ⌘+, )
• On the General tab, change the location of the library to where you copied the Aperture Library.aplibrary file

That's it, the library is now on your external drive.

Answer 2

Or before opening Aperture, hold down the Option/Alt key then click o Aperture to open. Aperture will ask you where your library is, then you can point it to your external drive.