Question : iPhoto - physically keep photos on firewire drive?

Can u help. I use a mac powerbook G4 with only 60g hdrive. I've amassed a huge library of photos using iPhoto and am seriously running out of disk space.

I have a Maxtor 1TB firewire external harddrive that I'd like to hold the photos (freeing up space on my powerbook) but I've no idea how to physically POINT iPhoto to photos located on a folder on this firewire drive!?

IF I click on 'Import to Library' ... the files are copied on to my powerbook - which is no help!

Any ideas!? Thanks!
R

Answer : iPhoto - physically keep photos on firewire drive?

Just go to iPhoto->Preferences and huh???
That would be too convenient now, wouldn't it?

It turns out that if the iPhoto library disappears, then iPhoto will prompt you with a dialog to create a new one or find an existing one.  So try this:  [ I used "MaxtorVolumeName" in lieu of the actual name of the your 1TB volume in the following discussion.]

1) Quit iPhoto
2) Move your existing iPhoto library to the external disk.
  DO NOT USE the FINDER to do this.  You want to preserve time and date stamps, permissions, and metadata.
  The Finder will alter the timestamps and it will take forever to copy all the files.
  a) The quickest way to do this would be to use the 'ditto' command from the command line in Terminal.app:
       ditto "~/Pictures/iPhoto Library" "/Volumes/MaxtorVolumeName/iPhoto Library"
    If your Pictures folder contains lots of images that have been imported into iPhoto, you might want to move
    the whole Pictures folder instead of just the enclosed iPhoto Library:
       ditto "~/Pictures" "/Volumes/MaxtorVolumeName/Pictures"
    That will copy all the pictures as well as your current iPhoto Library to the external drive.
   b) If you are uncomfortable using Unix command line. You can use Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper
     to copy the folder hierarchy.

3) Verify that all the files were copied correctly.  You are about to delete the photos from your internal disk.
    Make sure the copies are intact.

4) Delete the iPhoto Library on your internal hard disk.  
   a) Again the fastest and easiest way to do this is via the Unix command line
      [be very careful - the rm command destroys files permentently - no going back]:
      rm -rf "~/Pictures/iPhoto Library"
         or, if you copied the whole Pictures directory in step 2 [not just iPhoto Library],
      rm -rf "~/Pictures"
   b) If you are uncomfortable using Unix command line, you can delete the items using the Finder.
       However, they will still hog up your disk space until you empty the Trash.

5) Launch iPhoto.  It will complain that it cannot find the iPhoto library and give the the options to
"Quit", "Create Library...", or "Find Library...".   Choose "Find Library..." and navigate to the iPhoto
Library on the external volume.

6) Optional.  If you copied the entire "Pictures" folder to the external disk and deleted the local copy,
You may have dis-associated some non-iPhoto image data, such as desktop images, etc.  You may
want to create a symbolic link that points ~/Pictures to the copy on the external volume:
  ln -s /Volumes/MaxtorVolumeName/Pictures ~/Pictures