Since using my new iMac I've been having issues every time I attempt to open my photos library from an external hard drive. When I finally manage to get it to open, working on it is incredibly slow with the beachball logo forever spinning when I attempt to make changes of any kind. It's very frustrating to have a brand new computer which is actually working more slowly than my old machine. Please help.
iMac 27″, macOS 10.15
Is any WD software installed on your WD My Passport Ultra 3TB? If you have backup software installed, you may have problems with the file ownership. Try to set the "Ignore ownership on this volume" flag for your external volume. If this is not possible, the volume cannot be used for a Photos Library on macOS 10.15 or macOS 11. Set the flag as described here: Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support
Is any WD software installed on your WD My Passport Ultra 3TB? If you have backup software installed, you may have problems with the file ownership. Try to set the "Ignore ownership on this volume" flag for your external volume. If this is not possible, the volume cannot be used for a Photos Library on macOS 10.15 or macOS 11. Set the flag as described here: Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support
Can you show us the Info panel for your external drive?
Andreanna, I have just seen another post with a similar message about restoring - in connection with iCloud. See: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252383957?page=1
If your library is syncing with iCloud (check the System Preferences > AppleID > iCloud > Photos), Photos will restore the library after a repair. This can take a several days for a library as large as yours.
If your library is in iCloud, check, if you can download your photos individually from iCloud. Open the web page www.icloud.com , sign in with the AppleID you are using with iCloud, open the Photos.app on this page and try to download the photos you need. Can you download individual photos? Or are you getting an error message?
My hard drive is a WD My Passport Ultra 3TB and is connected via USB. My photos stopped responding and I'm now in the process of restoring the library which has now been going on for more than 12 hours and is currently telling me it's 68% done! So frustrating and I can't plug it into the old Mac because it's been updated on this one - AAAAHHHH!!!
Thanks for your very prompt response Leonie, I can't see that any WD software in installed on my WD hard drive so can't do any of the things you suggest. This is so incredibly frustrating. I'm basically terrified of losing my images, especially the older iPhoto ones.
That looks good. The only problem seems to be, that. to much free storage is left on the volume.
You wrote "My photos stopped responding and I'm now in the process of restoring the library which has now been going on for more than 12 hours and is currently telling me it's 68% done! " . What do you mean by "Restoring the library"? Is Photos showing a notice about "Restoring" or "Repairing", or are you trying to repair the library?
If your Photos Library is large, the free storage on that drive will not suffice for repairing or rebuilding the library. is your Photos Library using all of the 3TB, or do have several libraries on this volume? TI would move the library to a larger volume or create some free storage on the volume by moving other item to a different drive. repairing a huge library of nearly 3TB will take a very long time.
I initiated a repair photo library in an attempt to open it from the hard drive and it was happily repairing and was almost complete and the next time I checked, it had changed to 'restore' and that's going incredibly slowly at approx 1% an hour! My library is 1.86 TB and I also have some other items on the hard drive including an aperture library which is 1.09TB. Would the solution be to buy a new hard drive and move either one of the libraries onto that??? Am very frustrated as I'm attempting to do a photo book and am running out of time. I really appreciate your advice.
Thanks Leonie,
I don't use iCloud for photos on my computer so I think I'll purchase another hard drive, move the photo library to that and see if that speeds things up. Photos finally opened this morning but every action I take, I get the rolling beachball. Also, size of the library seems to vary to the one showing on my hard drive - that says 1.86TB and on the one open on my desktop it says 1.06? Thanks so much for all your advice.
Andreanna
Does this help?
What format is the external and how are you connected to it?
Problems with external photo library
