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My main photo library runs off an external hard drive. 5T with about 4T available.
When I open photos on the mac (OS Monterey 12.4) it opens painfully slow. Once a few photos are visible and you scroll - the "wheel of death" starts up again and all is frozen until it catches up.
Any solution to that?
Has the external drive been prepared as described here? Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support
You need to follow the instructions in all points. The external volume needs a wired connection, not mounted on the local network, the file system format should be MacOS Extended (Journaled) or APFS, the external drive must not have been used for Time Machine backups or have other backup software installed.
How much free storage is on your system volume? You need also storage on the internal drive.
When did the problem start? Right after updating to Monterey? Or after importing new photos and videos? Are you using iCloud Photos?
Has the external drive been prepared as described here? Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support
You need to follow the instructions in all points. The external volume needs a wired connection, not mounted on the local network, the file system format should be MacOS Extended (Journaled) or APFS, the external drive must not have been used for Time Machine backups or have other backup software installed.
How much free storage is on your system volume? You need also storage on the internal drive.
When did the problem start? Right after updating to Monterey? Or after importing new photos and videos? Are you using iCloud Photos?
Yes - properly prepared on all points. It's been slow since my last attempt to "import" about 3000 new items from my iPhone via USB (I did't have the cloud on my mac turned on because I thought I would run out of cloud space) After 3 lengthy calls to Apple support over the last couple of days they assisted me in moving my library from a a full 2T external drive to a 5T drive - redirecting my main photos library to the 5T drive and we also turned on iCloud so that all future photos and vids will be across all devices without the need to plug in and import in the future. They (the Apple Support specialists) told me the slowing is due to the fact that I am accessing the photos from the external drive vs the mac .. I suppose I could create a new library ... keep it on the mac and then move/copy them on the 5T a couple times per year for faster access to recent photos ... but that seems redundant. I can't possibly be the only person out here with 800+ GB (approx 80,000 photos and 3500 videos) ...
Have you checked the read and write speeds of your drive? I use Blackmagic Disk Speed Test. I see a big difference between mechanical and digital hard drives, between USB 3 and Thunderbolt, and between cables. Running through hubs may slow the speed down. Some USB-c cables that I have only work at USB 2 speeds, so they're good for power only, not data transfer. It's worthwhile to test all this stuff.
My digital portable hard drives show a speed of about 800 MB/s. I have a mechanical 2T drive, rather older, that says 100 MB/s. One of the better (cheap) flash drives I have writes at about 15 MB/s and reads at maybe 100 MB/s.
The 800 MB/s drives work well with Photos. The 100 MB/s drive seems really slow.
Painfully slow access to Photos library from external 5T hard drive
