saving IMac photos to USB C

Question

Level 1

6 points

saving IMac photos to USB C

My computer is new iMac 4, 16 Gb memory and is already stating it is full. I have 18,000 Photos on iCloud. I have run first aid, deleted duplicates etc. nothing is working. I have purchased Easystore external drive. It will not work. says, failed, full etc. Its was used 2 times and quite working. I have run first aid on it multiple times; I puchased a new usb hub with multiple ports and 2 different USB C devises Sandisk, never load. I am trying my best to backup my photos to external drive so I can regain storage. My computer is new iMac 4, 16 Gb memory and is already stating it is full. I have 18,000 Photos on iCloud. I have run first aid, deleted duplicates etc. nothing is working. Note: I also moved my photos library from "Pictures file" to my desktop as I access very frequently. I now have multiple libraries. How can I resolve these issues/

iMac 24″, macOS 15.3

Posted on Oct 7, 2025 7:52 AM

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Answer 1

Oct 7, 2025 9:06 AM in response to RRBell

How are your drives formatted? If you can, use Disk Utility to format them in APFS. I never use a new disk drive before re-formatting. They put crazy things on there.

How big is your internal drive? How much free storage do you have on it? If you have less than 10% of your internal drive free, you will have problems.

If you have 18000 pictures on iCloud, then you have 18000 pictures on your Mac.

Do you use "Optimize Storage?"

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Answer 2

Phil0124

Level 10

216,692 points

Oct 7, 2025 9:16 AM in response to RRBell

The 16GB is RAM, it has nothing to do with your Photos storage. That uses hard drive space or SSD space or storage as it's normally referred to.

If you go into System Settings ➜ General ➜ Storage, how much does it say you have exactly? It won't be 16GB, that's for sure.

Is it maybe saying that your iCloud Storage is full? This is a different type of storage on an Apple Server, and has nothing to do with your 16GB of RAM or even your Mac's hard drive storage.

If your Photos are on iCloud, then yes, they could be using up all the storage there as its normally just 5GB for the free option, and if you want any more you need to subscribe to iCloud+.

Photos in iCloud also live in the Photos app on your Mac, copying them from there to an external drive, will not release any space on iCloud on its own as it does not delete the files form iCloud, it just exports a copy.

You would need to make sure to export the photos you want onto a Usb drive, and then delete them from the Photos app.

The first thing you need to identify for us, is what exactly is saying is full. Again, your 16GB of RAM have nothing to do with this.

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