iPhoto Picture Storage Chaos

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I am currently running iLife '11 on my iMac (OSX 10.6.8) and iPhoto 9.2.1. About a year ago I discovered that advanced preference feature about importing that allows one to turn off the copying of photos to the iPhoto Library. Since I was having some space issues on the hard drive, I thought this would be a great way to save some space. So I unchecked the box. This left me with some photos in the library and some photos in their original locations, which, though a little messy was not the end of the world.

About 6 months ago, though, the space problem on the hard drive got critical, so I bought a 2TB external drive and moved everything to that... Or so I thought... In a recent check of iPhoto, I discovered iPhoto now references picture files in the library, pictures files on the original hard drive, and picture files on the new hard drive.

So, now I'm thinking I probably should get another external hard drive and move all my pictures to that, but given my current situation I'm not sure how to do that without completely starting over.

Does anyone have any thoughts on how I might extricate myself from this chaos?
 
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MBA 13", 2.0 i7, 8GB, Intel HD 4000 512MB, 250GB, 10.8.3
I am currently running iLife '11 on my iMac (OSX 10.6.8) and iPhoto 9.2.1. About a year ago I discovered that advanced preference feature about importing that allows one to turn off the copying of photos to the iPhoto Library. Since I was having some space issues on the hard drive, I thought this would be a great way to save some space. So I unchecked the box. This left me with some photos in the library and some photos in their original locations, which, though a little messy was not the end of the world.

About 6 months ago, though, the space problem on the hard drive got critical, so I bought a 2TB external drive and moved everything to that... Or so I thought... In a recent check of iPhoto, I discovered iPhoto now references picture files in the library, pictures files on the original hard drive, and picture files on the new hard drive.

So, now I'm thinking I probably should get another external hard drive and move all my pictures to that, but given my current situation I'm not sure how to do that without completely starting over.

Does anyone have any thoughts on how I might extricate myself from this chaos?

Have you tried moving all your photos off your computer, deleting the doubles if there are any, cleaning any folders that exist in iPhoto and then starting from fresh with iPhoto, as it was the first time you opened it on your computer?
 
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That would be my option of last resort... I'd loose everything I've set up... Events... Faces... Albums... Feels like the nuclear option to me.

I've thought about starting with a fresh iPhoto library (which is pretty easy to do), but getting back to where I am, as it were, would take a long time.
 
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MBA 13", 2.0 i7, 8GB, Intel HD 4000 512MB, 250GB, 10.8.3
well....why don't you then export your photos / events / albums, delete everything and then import them back in...I think there should be an option to export separately
 
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I'm not sure there is a way to export the Faces information... That takes a long time to reconstruct...

I think all I'd really like to do is tell iPhoto to look at the new disk drive, not the old. The file is the same (except for the location), so all the rest of the information (like Faces) would be the same.
 

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