macbook pro low on disk startup. please help

[MrPicky]

hi guys im having a really hard time understanding how an external hd works. ive always just saved my photos to my macbook pro internal hd. then one day i went out to get an external hd to save my photos just incase my laptop dies and also free up space on my laptop. ive been using time machine to back up. now my laptop says im low on disk startup. i would like to delete all my photos from my internal hd but im afraid it will also delete from external hd. what i really wanted to do all along was just store my photos on the external hd because now i realize time machine is only a backup and i really need to free up internal space. please help me achieve this task. tia

 

[Tom_N]

now my laptop says im low on disk startup. i would like to delete all my photos from my internal hd but im afraid it will also delete from external hd

Do not delete those photographs off the internal drive and count on the Time Machine backup to indefinitely store working copies. Time Machine might well keep old versions of the photographs for a time, but as it needs more space to track the current state of your internal disk, it will prune old versions. Once it prunes enough, you will be left with the current versions, a.k.a. "FILE DOES NOT EXIST", and nothing else.

To move these photos safely off your internal hard drive, you probably want to have at least two external hard disks. Copy the photos to one, and back that disk up to another (I would suggest using a clone program such as Carbon Copy Cloner). If your photos are in a library (e.g., iPhoto, Aperture, or Lightroom library), try to copy structures intact, and to verify that the application is able to see and use the library on the main external drive.

Once you have two full copies of your photos, and you have verified that applications can still access them, you can remove the files on the internal disk.

 

[MrPicky]

Thank you so much for explaining that to me. Can I just use the external hd like a flash drive and just create a folder in the external hd and drag them over? Thanks again.

 

[EricWN]

Yes, external drives all should work the same way. Create the folder you like, anything you drag onto an external drive will be copied there then.

Btw, should you ever feel like learning more about important tools like Mac OS X I recommend the book "the missing manual" by Mr Pogue.

Good luck!

 

[MrPicky]

Thanks eric for the recommendation.