Apple Photo Library Won't Open After Catalina Upgrade and New MacBook Migration
So this issue may be related to a new MacBook migration or just the upgrade to Catalina itself, but hoping someone can help as I've yet to find any prior advice on support forums to work.
BLUF: Bought new MacBook. Used Migration Assistant to set it up. Attempted to open my apple photo library on an external drive and the "update" process via Apple Photos failed to open the library. Repair stuck at 100%. And now, I can't enable Photo syncing with iCloud via System Preferences.
Long Story: My 2013 MacBook was not running Catalina prior to purchasing my new MacBook. So, to support the transition, I upgraded my 2013 to Catalina. This went fine. I then successfully migrated everything over to my new 2019 16" MacBook.
My Photo Library is just over 500gb and is stored on a rather slow (5400 rpm) external Western Digital drive. I never opened this library on my old MacBook after upgrading to Catalina, but it had worked albeit slowly fine in past operating systems.
I opened the library on my new MacBook and it went into an "updating library" cycle which took about 6 hours to run, but ultimately ended up failing in the end with a message saying the Mac could not open the photo library.
From there, I ran the repair cycle on the library. I eventually got a 100% message on the repair, but apple photos was frozen. I left it like this for about an hour and eventually force quit photos. I then tried to create a new library to just download everything from iCloud (I always sync.)
When I went to enable iCloud photos, I go to the system preferences>Internet Accounts and try to check the box for 'photos' under the iCloud settings. At first click, the Mac does something, but seems to just hang. Eventually it becomes responsive and won't let me check the box. It's not disabled or anything, it's just that when I check the box, it immediately unchecked it.
So, hoping someone can help fix 1 of my 2 issues.
- Photo Library just won't open on new MacBook with Catalina.
- Can't enable photo syncing via iCloud settings.
Thanks!!
DB Cooper.
MacBook