M1 iMac Photo Library is very slow...

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Level 1

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M1 iMac Photo Library is very slow...

My sister has a base M1 iMac. Her 300GB photo library seems virtually unusable once you delete an image on her iMac. The library sits on a 4TB external G-Tech drive connected directly via USB-C, formatted APFS.

I have connected this external drive to my base Mac Studio, and everything runs smoothly and fast. No issues whatsoever, so I know the drive and library are not corrupted.

Obviously, I have an M1 Max to her M1 and more ram, 32GB to her 8GB, but when she pulls up Activity Monitor, and looks at memory usage, it doesn't use any swap space. Is there something else going on that I'm not understanding? Thanks for any help.

iMac (24-inch, M1, 2021, 2 ports)

Posted on Jul 28, 2022 7:58 AM

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Answer 1

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léonie

Level 10

200,681 points

Jul 28, 2022 8:15 AM in response to knosh

Are you both using the same system version on your Macs?

Have you been opening the library on the external volume in turn? If you are using the same Photos Library, you need to enable the "Ignore Ownership on this volume " flag for the external volume, or Photos may have problems with the ownership of the internal files and wasting a lot of time trying to repair the library, see: Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support

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Answer 2

knosh Author

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8 points

Jul 28, 2022 7:07 PM in response to léonie

Thanks, I will most definitely have her check to make sure the Ignore Ownership on this Volume flag is set correctly.

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Answer 3

léonie

Level 10

200,681 points

Jul 28, 2022 10:33 AM in response to knosh

Nevertheless, try to set the "Ignore Ownership on this volume" flag as described here, just as a test : Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support. If this is not possible, there is a problem with the volume.

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Answer 4

knosh Author

Level 1

8 points

Jul 28, 2022 8:25 AM in response to léonie

Yes, both are using the same Mac OS, and are always kept up-to-date.

We don’t have it connected to both Macs at the same time. I was only trying to troubleshoot her photos library when she visited last week.

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M1 iMac Photo Library is very slow...

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