OK - a lot to reply to here! I understand iCloud Photos is a synchronisation service, it's my favourite thing about it - that I can pick up any of my Apple Devices and it shows any of my photos all up to date.
Since your last message, I've managed to clear a whole bunch of storage (40gb worth of podcasts - I had no idea they downloaded every single episode of certain channels... Stuff You Should Know has 500+ episodes, GAH!) - this has fixed my issue and iCloud is now syncing again.
I'm now faced with a different issue, that's related to the second half of your message re: External Drives. So, my original issue actually cropped up BECAUSE of my External Drive that I currently use - which is a 5TB one. I've got every photo I've ever taken since 2010 on here.. it's a lot of photos. My weekend task (that's still a task of now) was to get everything from this External Drive, into iCloud - this may make you squeamish but there's 2 reasons for this:
- I pay for 2TB of iCloud Storage, I currently am using around 600GB of this so I want to get my money's worth!
- I wanted to back my Photos up to iCloud incase my External Drive ever corrupted/lost/damaged
- I wanted to be able to view any photo, from any vacation, life event, on any of my Apple Devices at any given time (included in this task was me making countless folders/albums and timestamping/naming each one etc).
My new issue is this:
I seemingly have put so many photos into iCloud - that the Photos App on my Mac is no longer syncing correctly with iCloud - it will say 'Synced with iCloud Just Now' - which suggests all photos/albums have been synced. This is incorrect - as what's showing on my Photos App on my Mac is different to what's on iCloud.com and my other Apple Devices (e.g. my iPhone).
The albums I've filled up on my Photos App on my Mac, are empty on iCloud.com
The new albums I've created on my Photos App on my Mac, do not exist on iCloud.com
This is despite the Photos App on my Mac claiming all syncing is done. Do you have any suggestions here? I almost need to force-sync my Photos App on my Mac with iCloud but I can't see how you can do this anywhere - it doesn't seem like many people have come across this issue either.
Yesterday, everything was synced up perfectly, but this morning I imported a bunch of photos/videos from my External Drive into Photos App for my Mac and created new albums etc - the imports are complete, and according to Photos, iCloud syncing is complete' - but again, this doesn't show on iCloud.com or any other Apple Device when I view my photos.
Thanks!
Matt