IPhoto +portable hard drive question

[Fanner50]

I can no longer export photos from my iPhoto '09. I understand that this is a compatibility problem with Mavericks that I recently downloaded. So, I need to go to iPhoto 11. Before I do I want to backup my 40,000 photos on a WD My Passport for MAC that is formatted HFS+J. It is my understanding that the backup hard drive needs to be formatted
MAC OS Extended (Journaled. Is HFS-J the same thing? If not, how to I reformat the new hard drive to the Extended Journaled? These pictures are backed up on Time Machine, but I would like another back up that is just photos. I am very fearful of losing everything. Please help. Thanks

 

[chscag]

If you're just going to copy the 40,000 photos to an external hard drive, you can format the drive as HFS+, FAT-32, exFAT, or even NTFS. However, when you speak about backing them up using Time Machine or cloning software, then the external drive must be formatted to HFS+ (Mac OS Extended Journaled). To format an external drive, use Disk Utility which is located in your Applications, Utilities folder.

 

[Fanner50]

Thanks for your answer. My post wasn't real clear. I am backing up to Time Machine now and I want to have a second back up to another hard drive so that I will have a duplicate back up when I upgrade to iPhoto 9.5.1 from iPhoto '09. I'm reading way too many horror stories about doing this upgrade and I want to have a second backup just in case. I actually just completed that second backup and it went perfect, so now I have my Time Machine backup plus a second back up in case something goes wrong with the upgrade.

Any advise on the upgrade? Thank You very much for your help.

 

[chscag]

For most of us Mavericks has been a smooth upgrade. No problems whatsoever. Naturally, you're going to hear about the upgrades which didn't go well. Making backups assures you that if you do run into problems, you can always go back. You probably should look at using Carbon Copy Cloner to make a bootable backup of your current system prior to installing the Mavericks upgrade. Time Machine backups are not bootable.

Also, you need to think about Yosemite which will likely be released to the public sometime this Fall.