Photos 3.0 (3291.13.210) for Mac crashes repeatedly on Mac OS High Sierra
My library is big (~40000 items, spanning ~500GB) and contains all our family's footage which is very important. In addition - I have invested thousands of hours on this library, identifying faces, setting locations to old photos taken by cameras without GPS, creating hundreds of Albums, "Projects" "Events" etc. Yes - this library started with the first iPhoto, and migrated to Photos grudgingly - I still think iPhoto is much better, but Apple withdrew support of it.
I do NOT use iCloud for the whole library - it is too big for my pocket. I DO use the old photo-stream for synchronizing photos across my devices.
Lately, Photos began crashing more and more frequently and the situation deteriorated to a point where I would just open it - and it will crash autonomously (without me doing anything) within 10-20 seconds of its launch.
Of course I tried the "repair" option (pressing Option upon launching the app) at least a dozen times, despite it taking over an hour to finish (successfully... huh!) then it would crash again.
I also tried repairing in "Safe mode", with iCloud turned off for Photos, etc. To no avail.
To my horror - I found that all my backups of the library (on 5 different hard drives) dating 5 months back - exhibit more-or-less the same behavior (when I launched photos to choose another library, and chose one of the backups - it would sometimes survive a minute or so, but as soon as I tried to do something - it would crash).
I then took yet another copy, and started playing with both Photos and the Library.
First off, I deleted all "Photos" related "Containers" from ~/Library/Containers/
I looked for any Cache (both in ~/Library/Caches and in the /Library and /System/Library) related to Photos - and deleted them. I then opened the "Photos Library" bundle, and looked for stray junk. There were tons of iPhoto leftovers there - which I deleted too. I also took the chance, and deleted the ".skindex" files from the database directory within the Photos Library bundle.
Then I restarted... and opened Photos again. It came up, opened the library, and didn't crash for a few minutes. I started clicking Faces, Moments, etc. and it looks like working -- except this:
ANY TIME I CLICK ANY ALBUM -
Photos will crash immediately, and the crash-log looks almost the same (attached).
It looks like I'm in better state than before - still I'm really scared I might lose my work on this library, and quite reluctant to attempt to re-do from scratch all my work on these photos, videos, etc.
Does anyone have any idea about the source of the problem? What can I do? I can't even give up my Albums and delete them - because Photos crashes as soon as I try to select one.
iMac Line (2012 and Later)
