Q: Photos wants to re-upload my entire library
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Feb 25, 2016 4:53 AMby léonie,There is no help for this. When you restore a Photos Library, move it to another drive, or even only repair it. Photos will upload all photos again to merge it with what is currently in iCloud. It needs to upload the files to iCloud to compare them.
You could avoid the upload by starting again with a new library, that will download from iCloud.
But this way you will lose all print projects - books, calendars, card. And the faces thumbnails are not stored in iCloud, so you will have to name the faces thumbnails again.
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Feb 25, 2016 11:12 PMby rhapgood,According to Apple support this is not the case. Like any decent cloud sync it should use a combination of metrics (filename, size, hash, etc) to determine if the local files match what is already in the cloud without having to upload the entire file.
However, despite them insisting I shouldn't need to re-upload (or start from scratch) I'm yet to find a way to make it recognise the local copy as a match for what's already in the cloud. From what I'm reading it seems the QA department has really dropped the ball when it comes to iCloud Photos.
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Feb 26, 2016 1:51 AMby léonie,HelpfulAccording to Apple support this is not the case. Like any decent cloud sync it should use a combination of metrics (filename, size, hash, etc) to determine if the local files match what is already in the cloud without having to upload the entire file.
Perhaps it is meant to be this way, but that is not what is happening. And the Photos Help does not even mention what will happen if you move a Photos Library to a different drive. As long as you move it on the same drive it is recognized as the same library, but not if you copy it to a different volume.
The only document I could find, where it is mentioned that the complete library will upload again, is this: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205069
It describes, what will happen after a repair:
Note: If you use iCloud Photo Library with Photos, this action will cause Photos to re-upload all your pictures.
I have tested copying the library, and after making a library the copy of the library the iCloud Library, the Console will show plenty of "Duplicate Detection" messages. You can see them, if you enter "photomodel" into the Console search field.
And "Duplicate Detection" is what I would expect to happen. But the status message in the the Photos Library Cloud Preferences is calling this "Uploading 40000 items", the same at the bottom of the "Moments" view in the browser. My conclusion is, that the duplicate detection is done by uploading. It is the same amount of network traffic, the am messages in the console, and it takes as long as repairing the library, where the documentation says, that the photos will be uploaded again.
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Feb 26, 2016 1:50 AMby rhapgood,I agree 100% and perhaps when they say it shouldn't upload again they mean "it might say it is but it really isn't"... however I was running the Activity Monitor and saw it peg my upload, so it was doing something heavy on the network.
Either way I've given up and created a new library. It seems to trickle the download (unless you open a photo) so that should avoid me exceeding my cap over the next 2 months. Frustrating, but thank you léonie for your help.
