How to disable mac photos from constantly spinning external hard drive?

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Level 1

31 points

How to disable mac photos from constantly spinning external hard drive?

I have a 2020 iMac 5k retina running 12.4. I set up my giant external thunderbolt hard drive to store my 260gig photo library. I like having a full copy of all my photos and videos from years stored at home. I pay for iCloud 2tb service to sync the computer with my iPhone.

HOWEVER, the system is constantly buzzing the hard drive. Either photoanalysisd or photolibraryd is running in the background and just makes my computer so noisy all the day. The external hard drive shouldn't be spinning all the time, but because of these processes, using the hard drive with my computer is annoying. The computer should be mostly silent.

I contacted Apple and they call this a "feature." Photos is keeping the database up to date. But it's ridiculous! I don't take that many photos and I don't want these background processes working all the time, constantly spinning my hard drive. I have complained about this issue and Apple apparently does not care about the problem. Does anyone else experience this issue? I end up keeping my external hard drive disconnected most of the time when I'm not using it because it just makes so much unnecessary noise because of Mac Photos.

And suggestions on how to disable the background processes?

thanks

iMac

Posted on Jul 16, 2022 9:18 AM

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Answer 1

Old Toad

Level 10

216,094 points

Jul 17, 2022 9:47 AM in response to adam0072

adam0072 wrote:

Is there any way to block or disable the Mac photos background processes?

Unfortunately, no. You'll need to follow one of the suggestions already put forth. I use external SSDs like this for similar situations:

The cost of bare SSDs from OWC is currently:

Or budget permitting you can use of of OWCs SATA docks like this:

They are speedy and quite. I use the rotating disk HDs for Time Machine.

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Answer 2

léonie

Level 10

200,699 points

Jul 23, 2022 10:56 AM in response to adam0072

You'll get less background processes, if you do not make your Photos Library your System Photos Library, as some features are only available in the System Photos Library. But you will not be able to use the library with iCloud or in the Media Browser in other apps. The System Photos Library is always in use by background processes, but it should be possible to eject drives with other libraries, that are not the System Photos Library.

My Macs are also rather noisy with spinning external drives, but most of the time it is simply Time Machine backing up the Photos Library every hour making the noise; the Photos background processes are not making that many disk read/writes. Have you checked, if you are having items in your Photos Library in a legacy format, that cannot be processed any longer by macOS 12? Any older videos or scanned photos in an unsupported format?

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Answer 3

Jul 17, 2022 12:34 AM in response to adam0072

Unmount the HDD when you want silence. Or get a SSD.

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Answer 4

adam0072 Author

Level 1

31 points

Jul 16, 2022 8:28 PM in response to adam0072

Also it will do this when the iMac is supposedly asleep! Came in at 8:30pm tonight and I can hear the hard drive grinding away. "Mediaanalysisd" is running as well. Crazy. There's nothing to do with my photos! Why does this nonsense go on all the time? Mac won't let me eject it either. Often the only way to get it to shut up and eject without force eject is to LOG OUT, then disconnect the drive. It's really outrageous that this is how the OS runs.

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Answer 5

Jul 17, 2022 7:58 AM in response to adam0072

I always just force-unmount volumes when some background process or daemon wants to keep it. No ill effects with that.

I have been reluctant to otherwise mess with background processes although I have been tempted to give higher priority to Photos-related tasks that seem very lazy (especially faces recognition that might take weeks/months to start -- preventing sleep via the control panel seems to kick it on better than using hot corners to prevent sleep but that may be coincidental).

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Answer 6

adam0072 Author

Level 1

31 points

Jul 17, 2022 7:38 AM in response to Matti Haveri

Yup, internal drive is a 500gig SSD, which I don't want to fill half up with photos. And as I mentioned above, unmounting is difficult since the system often won't let it unmount because of the Mac photos-related background processes that go on almost all the time when the drive is mounted.

Is there any way to block or disable the Mac photos background processes?

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Answer 7

adam0072 Author

Level 1

31 points

Jul 22, 2022 9:01 PM in response to Matti Haveri

You always force-unmount volumes despite warnings about data loss? I'm sorry but that seems like a terrible idea. I have know way of confirming exactly what is going on with the drive -- the Finder only says the drive wasn't ejected because "one or more programs may be using it." Unless you're going to personally guarantee my data security, I would never recommend that to anyone.

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