alexhay

Q: Running out of HD space with optimised library

I have a large iCloud photo library of around 30k photos (330 gigs) which is stored in full on a mac mini I run as a server (backed up to a Time Machine).

 

This is synced to my iPhone 6 and I also to my MacBook Pro (15-inch, Early 2011, El Captian 10.11.4 beta) as an optimised library.

 

My problem is the laptop's SSD hard is only 250GB and photos is consistently filling it up with photos right to the brink. At the moment I have 2.54GBs left. Sometimes it goes down to a couple of hundred megabytes. It doesn't seem that Photos is flushing the photos cache properly. It's frustrating because I then can't download any large files or update the software etc. Not sure if this is a beta problem or if it's something anyone else has encountered?

 

My photos library reads as being 109.39GB in the User > Pictures folder. In the storage tab on 'About This Mac', it lists photos as taking up 35.89GB.

 

My question is what is the best was to resolve it? It's such a closed box it's difficult to diagnose what it's doing. I've tried:

 

- restarting

- turning optimises library on and off in photos prefs

 

I'm thinking of:

 

- repairing library

- deleting library from this mac and re-syncing it down (not sure about the safest way to do this though!)

 

Thanks in advance for any help.

 

Alex

MacBook Pro (15-inch Early 2011), OS X El Capitan (10.11.4), null

Posted on Jun 11, 2016 3:54 AM

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Q: Running out of HD space with optimised library

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  • by léonie,

    léonie léonie Jun 11, 2016 4:33 AM in response to alexhay
    Level 10 (106,848 points)
    iLife
    Jun 11, 2016 4:33 AM in response to alexhay

    - repairing library

    - deleting library from this mac and re-syncing it down (not sure about the safest way to do this though!)

    Do you have faces tagged and products (Books, lenders, Slideshows) ?  If you delete the library and then download it again, the faces album and your products will not sync back.

     

    I'd make a copy of your current library on an external drive to save all your products and labelled faces, and then delete the library from the internal drive and download it again from iCloud.

    Before you trash your Photos Library, wait until the Photos > Preferences > iCloud is showing that the library has been updated.

     

    • Quit Photos.
    • Delete your current Photos Library from the internal drive.
    • Empty the Trash.
    • Launch Photos while holding down the Options key ⌥.
    • From the Library Chooser panel select to create a new library.
    • Enable this new library as your iCloud Photo Library in Photos > Preferences > iCloud; enable "Optimize Mac Storage".
    • Wait for the photos to download in an optimized version.
  • by alexhay,

    alexhay alexhay Jun 11, 2016 4:38 AM in response to alexhay
    Level 1 (8 points)
    Photos for Mac
    Jun 11, 2016 4:38 AM in response to alexhay

    Thanks for your reply Léonie I'll give this a shot and report back if it works.

     

    Thankful I did all my face tagging on the master library on my server. Hoping the next version of Photos will sync all that data through iCloud.

  • by léonie,

    léonie léonie Jun 11, 2016 4:43 AM in response to alexhay
    Level 10 (106,848 points)
    iLife
    Jun 11, 2016 4:43 AM in response to alexhay

    You're welcome.

    When the library syncs back from iCloud it will be like syncing back from a different Mac, as described in this document:  https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204486

     

    The faces tags will not be completely gone. The photos will have the faces name as a searchable tag, so you can search for the photos with the faces. They will just not show as faces circles on the photos and in the Faces albums.

  • by LarryHN,

    LarryHN LarryHN Jun 11, 2016 5:48 AM in response to alexhay
    Level 10 (84,585 points)
    Photos for Mac
    Jun 11, 2016 5:48 AM in response to alexhay

    (15-inch, Early 2011, El Captian 10.11.4 beta)

    Step 1 -      get up to date - your beta software is far out of date - OS X 10.11.5 was released weeks ago - Beta software is not reliable and you should expect problems - and it also is under an NDA and discussions must be in the non-public beta forums not in public forums

     

    LN