Syncing a huge photos library with iCloud photo's library

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Syncing a huge photos library with iCloud photo's library

My father in law has a huge photos library of 130,000 items plus. This photo library is just over 1 TB in size and on an external drive (LaCie 5 TB). I started syncing this library (which has been dormant for a few years) with his iCloud photos library yesterday. This huge library has been set as the system library and the photos library on the MacBook pro has been removed. Since there were already 11,000 photos in his iCloud library mainly from his iPhone, this merging process is taking very long. iCloud has been upgraded to 2 TB to accommodate these items. If patience is all that is needed then we are prepared to wait but is there another way to approach this process that is quicker but offers the same benefits as having all photo's saved in iCloud?

MacBook Pro

Posted on May 29, 2020 4:40 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

markwmsn

Level 6

15,635 points

May 29, 2020 10:52 PM in response to Gavin Lindhout

Patience will suffice. How much patience depends on the upload speed of your Internet link, whether you leave your Mac on and awake all the time, the age and speed of your MBP and LaCie drive, and other factors.

I'm not sure what you mean about a quicker way to approach the process with the same benefits. Which benefits of having all photos stored in iCloud do you need? For example, are you syncing these photos to other devices through iCloud Photos (perhaps downloaded in optimized form)? Do you plan to view them on the iCloud.com website? Something else?

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Answer 2

léonie

Level 10

197,315 points

May 30, 2020 3:41 PM in response to Gavin Lindhout

Gavin Lindhout wrote:

... And yes the plan is to have these photos synced with an iPhone and MacBook Pro.

It will only work, if the iPhone and the other Mac are having a very large local storage. The iCloud Photos Library needs enough storage local on the device for the optimised versions, at least ten percent of the size in iCloud, it may be more. It depends on the format of the image files.

Syncing is a very good reason for using iCloud, but the storage of the smallest device will be the bottle neck.

See: Three Good Reasons for Using iCloud Photos Library and when not to use it - Apple Community

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Answer 3

May 30, 2020 7:50 AM in response to markwmsn

Thanks for your response. We will exercise patience. And yes the plan is to have these photos synced with an iPhone and MacBook Pro. The upload does seem to hang sometimes and then goes faster for a while so it might not be as long as I thought. A few weeks though at least. Thanks again.

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Syncing a huge photos library with iCloud photo's library

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