Q: How to access my photo library on an external drive
I have my library on an external hard drive, when I connect it to Photos on another Mac it requests me to upgrade my iCloud storage. I just want it to connect to my existing iCloud Library. Any help?
Posted on Jul 24, 2015 12:35 AM
I think the issue is that the photo library on the external disk is not set as a Systems Photo Library.
You can only enable a System Photo Library to sync with iCloud. But even after you enable the library on the external drive as the System Photo Library the Mac will not know that all photos are already in iCloud and miscalculate the amount of iCloud storage needed. You are risking to upload duplicates this way. Photos is checking for duplicates and should recognize them, but the process is terribly slow.
To use the iCloud Photo Library from two macs it is easier to start with an empty library on the second Mac and to sync this empty library with iCloud. (Use Photos and iCloud Photo Library on multiple Mac computers - Apple Support) All photos will download and recreate your Photos Library on the second Mac. Create this empty library on your external drive to start with. The drawback will be, that you will have the library stored twice on your external drive.
Posted on Jul 24, 2015 2:51 AM