Need Help Designing Photo Backup Solution

Here's another way to think about it: On a Mac, you can have more than one Photos Library. I know that I do not want to see all of my pictures on my phone or iPad, even though I want to keep them. So I have divided my Library. I keep the archive of all my pictures on an external drive, and I keep only a smaller subset of favorite pictures in a separate "Favorites Library" on my Mac. The Favorites Library is designated as my System Library and is connected to iCloud, so my iPhone and iPad have the pictures that I like to look at and share with friends, but not the tons of similar or less interesting pictures.

New pictures that I take on my Nikon actually go into a separate Nikon Library. I crop, edit, rate, and annotate them there. Then I sort out the favorites and copy them to the Favorites Library.

I use Time Machine for daily incremental backups and, like you, I periodically copy all the Libraries in their entirety to another hard drive for a double backup.

Working on smaller Libraries is faster and, it seems, less prone to error. Many of us use  PowerPhotos ($30) to help manage multiple Libraries.

What do you think?

xtheguitarmanx wrote: ... Am I understanding correctly? Does this seem like a reasonable plan? Am I missing anything?

I'm not quite sure. The System Library will always have exactly what is in iCloud Library. Only the System Library connects with iCloud. I sounds like you're thinking of swapping libraries back and forth with iCloud, and that's perilous. Your System Library should always be connected to the computer-- usually it's on the internal drive. (People with a desktop computer can have the Library on an external drive that is always connected.) The thing is, Photos constantly scans the System Library in the background, comparing libraries, looking for faces, judging the storage needs, or whatever the heck it does--but swapping libraries can mess that all up.

What I did was to copy my System Library which is connected to iCloud, and then remove the "non-favorites" from the that System Library. Then, after making a safe copy of the large Library, I divided the large library into libraries for more recent pictures, for work, for old family pictures, for pictures from a particular camera, and so on. Each started as a copy of the Large Library, and I deleted the pictures that didn't belong.

I'm still finding some old family pictures, for instance, so I scan them, import them to the "old family pictures" Library, decide which ones others might like to see, and copy those to the System Library on the internal drive. They are then automatically added to iCloud and to my iPhone and iPad. Pictures that I take with my phone automatically go to the "favorites" System Library, and I copy those to the "recent pictures" Library. So-- the System Library holds my favorites, and they are all duplicated in some other Library.

Time Machine can be set to include external drives when they are connected.

Anyway, this was my process. Most of those Libraries don't get accessed very often, so they provide an archival service, really. There are lots of other ways to go about it. But try to avoid swapping system libraries.

PowerPhotos isn't for copying. You can just drag a Photos Library to an external drive.

Download Original vs Optimize Storage is only about iCloud. In Optimize, only small versions of the pictures are stored locally. If you want to zoom in to see more detail, then Photos will bring in a larger version to work with. But, with "Optimize," you can't back up the full images-- they're in iCloud. So that's why I have a smaller Library on my Mac with "Download" checked. This Library automatically gets all new pictures, so new pictures get backed up. The other Libraries have older pictures that don't change much, so daily backup is not needed.

I use iCloud and local Libraries for new and precious pictures.

I've lost track-- do you have two Macs? Each Mac can have it's own System Library which will sync with iCloud.

Sounds good. My only concern is that connecting and disconnecting the external drive may cause problems-- I'm not really sure. If, when you become portable, you go to Photos and turn off iCloud, then unplug; then plug in the drive before reconnecting Photos to iCloud, I'm sure that's OK. If you don't do that, then every once in a while Photos may get confused--again, I'm not sure. But your pictures will always remain safe at iCloud Photos.

I keep my Library on my internal hard drive, and I put everything else (well, nearly everything...) on a tiny SSD that I cary with me. Here are two solid state drives

that I carry in my computer bag. One is 4TB, the other is 2TB. They weigh about an ounce each, and they cost about $70/TB. I have two because I am paranoid about drive failure, though it hasn't been a problem.

What do you think?

To have two separate libraries iCloud consider to use two different user accounts with different AppleIDs.

• One user account could sync your current main library to iCloud Photos and your iPad and iPhone and keep the library local on your Mac.
• One user account with a different AppleID could sync a larger archive library (residing on an external drive) to iCloud Photos, but not to your iPhone.

Use family sharing to share your iCloud Storage between the two AppleIDs.

Yes, my concern was for Photos being in the midst of some background operation when the disk is disconnected. Since, when the Library is not connected to the System Library it can't do the background stuff, anyway, being unhooked from iCloud won't slow anything extra.

I also have a mechanical drive, older & 3 TB, with Time Machine on my desk. Backups don't need to be blazingly fast. 2 mechanical backup drives can be cheaper than one SSD. But for using (rather than backing up) Photos Libraries and other data, SSDs are way faster.

Thanks for the thought, not a bad idea, but I am hoping to keep my entire photo library available on my devices, despite its size. I think this should be achievable somehow,

There's an alternative to Photos called Mylio which allows you to set the size of the images shared to specific devices - so small versions for phones, large for iPads and so on. It Laos does a cloud back up but it's sharing doesn't actually need the cloud at all. It does pretty much everything else Photos does and then some. Worth considering:

https://mylio.com/