How to save photos on external hard-drive from iphoto 09 v:8.1.2

Hi there

I'm running out of space on my macbook and want to save photos on an external hard drive (in addition to time machine). I have an old macbook, about 5 years old and my iphoto is 09 version 8.1.2 (424).

I have about 17,000 photos to back up. I'd like to save the folders that some of them are in and more importantly make sure dates when photos were taken are saved.

Many thanks

Your best way is to move your existing iPhoto library en-masse to the external drive. You can continue to access it by holding option when starting iPhoto. This will free up the space, you'll lose nothing.

There are many sets of instructions out there for doing this. Here's just one of them:
http://basics4mac.com/article.php/move_iphoto_lib