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What is the best way to upload a huge photo library to iCloud?

I've heard it takes foreever to upload a large photo library. I have 40,000 photos I'm uploading. From what I've read this could take weeks. Any way around this? I can't take my iMac to an Apple store and have them do some upload trick there to push it to the icloud faster can I? If I just need to let it run forever, will it start from the beginning if its interupted? My fear is I'll have 2 weeks of it running and something happens and I'm back to the beginning again.

Posted on Jun 1, 2019 2:46 PM

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Posted on Jun 1, 2019 11:33 PM

See these articles https://support.apple.com/en-in/HT204247

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/system-information/sysp4ee93ca4/mac

As per this article https://support.apple.com/en-in/HT204264

When you turn on iCloud Photos, the time it takes for your photos and videos to upload to iCloud depends on the size of your collection and your Internet speed. If you have a large collection of photos and videos, your upload might take more time than usual. You can see the status and pause the upload for one day.

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4 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jun 1, 2019 11:33 PM in response to TwoScoopsMD

See these articles https://support.apple.com/en-in/HT204247

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/system-information/sysp4ee93ca4/mac

As per this article https://support.apple.com/en-in/HT204264

When you turn on iCloud Photos, the time it takes for your photos and videos to upload to iCloud depends on the size of your collection and your Internet speed. If you have a large collection of photos and videos, your upload might take more time than usual. You can see the status and pause the upload for one day.

Jun 1, 2019 3:55 PM in response to TwoScoopsMD

I can't take my iMac to an Apple store and have them do some upload trick there to push it to the icloud faster can I?

No.


All traffic to & from iCloud is via the internet. Period.


Reality is 40,000 photos is a lot of data and iCloud does not just "FTP" it to a server. There are data integrity checks ongoing and throughout the upload. That's what prevents "starting" from the beginning whenever possible.





Jun 1, 2019 10:10 PM in response to TwoScoopsMD

I’m having a similar (opposite) problem. I have 30k photos on iCloud and am having trouble downloading to my Mac. Most recently when I am trying to sync via photos app on Mac, photos would be deleted from my iCloud (I have since recovered!). Not sure how to proceed to get this huge number of photos synced from cloud into my Mac. Any help appreciated!

Jun 2, 2019 7:25 AM in response to LACAllen

As long it does start over if it loses connection I'll just wait it out. Looks like at its pace after the first day it will take 23 days to complete the upload to iCloud. Any idea if it continues to upload if you close the Photos app on my iMac? Also I wanted to work on editing some photos/making a photo book. Would you recommend waiting till after the entire upload is complete?

What is the best way to upload a huge photo library to iCloud?

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