Q: Help moving Photos.app library to new Mac!
Hello!
So I got a new Mac, lucky me!
Now I would like to move my Photos.app library (150gb) to the new Mac. It's synced with iCloud library. I thought of three possible options, all of them for one reason or another incomplete:
If I just download all photos on the other Mac from iCloud, a part from taking ages it will sync everything but not the Faces album (only the metadata) and not smart albums. So basically I would have all pictures but not the actual original photo library
If I physically move it from the old to the new mac (copy to external hard drive from old mac, copy from external to new one), iCloud thinks it's a new library and when I prompt it to sync it starts uploading all 17000 photos (which are all already online of course). Question here: will iCloud see the duplicates and skip uploading or will it actually duplicate all the pictures? I don't want to leave it on all night thinking it is just checking for duplicated and ending up in the morning with thousands of duplicates...
Final option: migration assistant from Time Machine. A part from the fact that I get all the old stuff I don't want when I open photos app after the migration it prompts me to repair the library. After that, it takes ages to rebuild thumbnails. Ages, numerous crashes and at least 4 or five app restarts.... The icloud library just says 'updating' for ages, no progress bar. And I am not even sure at the end of it it will be usable, since it crashes, etc.
Am I missing something? Is there a way to easily migrate from old to new computer the library without re-upoloading everything with iCloud and without re-downloading everything from iCloud?
Thanks!
MacBook Pro, OS X Yosemite (10.10.3)
Posted on Jun 10, 2015 3:50 AM
I migrated the library to my other macs by downloading from iCloud. That is quicker than copying and syncing again, because syncing again is extremely slow because of the duplicate checks. It was faster to recreate the faces. Your Smart albums will sync between the two macs: See:
Use Photos and iCloud Photo Library on multiple Mac computers - Apple Support
And since the searchable faces tags will sync as well, you can recreate the faces labels quickly by searching for face names, tagging a few photos for your contacts and Photos will suggest plenty of other photos of the same person, based on the searchable face tags it already has.
If I physically move it from the old to the new mac (copy to external hard drive from old mac, copy from external to new one), iCloud thinks it's a new library and when I prompt it to sync it starts uploading all 17000 photos (which are all already online of course). Question here: will iCloud see the duplicates and skip uploading or will it actually duplicate all the pictures? I don't want to leave it on all night thinking it is just checking for duplicated and ending up in the morning with thousands of duplicates...
Is is nowhere documented what will happen. Photos does duplicate checks when syncing, but I have not seen any reports from other users, if duplicates will be recognized, when the library is copied between different devices.
Added: You only have to give Photos some time -a few days - to scan again for faces after you synced the library to your new mac.
Posted on Jun 10, 2015 4:14 AM