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User profile for user: NixyJ77
NixyJ77 Author
User level: Level 1
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iCloud Photo Library to Mac - expected behaviour after Time Machine restore??

Hi All,


Hoping someone can help me pull the answers together around iCloud Photo Library EXPECTED behaviour - I spent so many hours reading and trawling forums but have finally had to admit defeat….I’m so incredibly frustrated!


Macbook Air, Yosemite 10.10.3

Photos Version 1.0 (209.52.0). Photos Library - Approx 30k images, 160GB


Before a recent holiday:

  • Complete Photos Library stored in iCloud with Hi-Res Originals on Mac, plenty of storage on Mac free (100+ GB)
  • Full Time Machine back up to external drive the night before I went travelling


Whilst on holiday

shot and added another 5GB of photos and videos to Library - Mac rarely connected to internet but first few were making it into iCloud


Since returned

  • All remaining new images uploaded to iCloud
  • Mac started moaning that not enough space to keep originals - absolute rubbish - there’s LOADS of storage (or so I thought) - and switched to Optimise Storage mode in Photos
  • Yesterday - Mac melts down, (cause still to be determined), seems to have duped 19k photos, GBs worth of thumbnails - only 2GB now free - but these “dupes” did NOT appear to have been recognised by Photos or pushed to icloud
  • Yesterday - Several hours diving around in logs etc but in the end decided to restore from Time Machine backup taken just before I left - there were several things that just weren’t right. It seemed easier to go back to point in time where all was well and smply just reimport the photos I shot whilst away from the SD card in 1 go. No other changes or updates made to Mac inbetween.


So far, so good-ish


So here are my questions that I just really want to understand - if any of you can answer one or all I’d be mega grateful!


  • After restore I was back to 100GB+ free but Mac now still says not enough space to store originals. Can anyone explain why this might be?
  • In Photos->Preferences I can see it attempting to re-upload all 30k images to iCloud - can someone confirm its just doing a diff?!
  • In Preferences I can also see it attempting to “Add” 30k images - is this it also doing a diff from iCloud to Mac?….if so...
  • Will iCloud eventually sync BACK to the Mac the images that were shot on holiday and uploaded to iCloud but subsequently wiped from Mac during restore yesterday?
  • On the other hand….on my iPhone I can still see all the new images so I’m also questioning why effectively “deleting” those new images from the Mac library during the restore yesterday hasn’t removed them from icloud?


I guess all of my questions are around what ultimately is the master here, the order of precedence and what role iCloud actually plays - just when I think I’ve got it, there’s some behaviour that seems contradictory!


I really want to understand this and learn the clear work flow and expected behaviour - it seems incredibly black box right now.


Any help, or a even a slap for being dim witted, would be much appreciated!

THANK YOU!!

MacBook Air (13-inch Mid 2012), OS X Yosemite (10.10.3)

Posted on Jun 26, 2015 1:39 AM

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User profile for user: PaulCommentary
PaulCommentary
User level: Level 1
67 points

Posted on Jun 26, 2015 7:45 AM

NicyJ77,


This is a well described scenario and one that many of us have had. We've also had many of the same questions you are asking. And, if you read blogs and listen to podcasts, many well-versed mac users have had these questions too.


The most important question (in my opinion) you are asking is: how do iCloud Photo Library and a backup (be it Time Machine or Carbon Copy Cloner or other) work together after a backup or transfer to new Mac? The correct workflow for preserving your pictures AND THEIR ASSOCIATED CURATION needs to be clear. Furthermore, that workflow should not require the download of your entire iCloud Photo Library if you have a local copy of your Photos Library.


Some insights:


Some will suggest that you make no use of any local backups, create a new empty Photos library and let all your pictures download to it from iCloud Photo Library. That is not desirable for two reasons (1) The iCloud Photos Library is not a complete backup of your curation. For example, it does not backup any projects you have created. (2) It is a celestial waste of bandwidth and your time when you already have a local backup.


Others will suggest that you are not compelled to use Photos and can go back to iPhoto and/or Aperture. That's true for now. And in fact if I could do it over again, knowing ahead of time the headaches with Photos, I would have completely ignored Photos for at least a year as Apple worked the bugs out with it and iCloud Photo Library, Aperture was working fine. [But at that time, I suspected Aperture would not support newly released cameras, or be updated to work with new versions of the Flickr API, or integrate properly with other Yosemite features, or so on. Apple silent on many of those issues, so uncertainty occurs.]


Others will suggest that you restore the library from backup as you have and let the sync with iCloud Photos Library sort things out. My personal experience is that the messages you see about "re-uploading" and "adding" are wrong, the result of sloppy programming in Photos. And that what is actually happening is a "diff". I believe this to be the case because the time for this operation was about 1/7th of the original upload. This did eventually work for me. HOWEVER others, many others, many experienced others, have reported a complete re-upload with duplication of many photos. So you are right to feel complete uncertainty as to trusting this workflow. I still do and hope I don't have to deal with it again.


Here's what I've done to protect my library and pictures in the meantime:


  • I bought a brand new separate hard drive (CALL IT BLUE) of 2 TB for <$100. (My pictures occupy 100 GB by the way.). I will use this drive to keep many versions of my libraries over the next year until the Photos problems become sorted out.
  • I went to old backups and found my iPhoto library prior to the Photos upgrade and copied it to BLUE. Many reasons for this. But one is this will keep all the work on books and slideshows I did in iPhoto around since the migration of books and slideshow to Photos is "lossy".
  • On the day I bought BLUE, I copied my current Photos library to BLUE and added the current date to the name. Every few weeks, I do that again. I figure I can keep about 10 copies of the library here.
  • When I take pictures with my Canon DSLR, I first copy them to BLUE, and then add them to Photos. Two independent copies then.
  • On my iPhone, I've enabled Dropbox backup of Photos using Carousel. Every few weeks, I copy those photos from Dropbox to BLUE. Two independent copies then.
  • Finally, I am experimenting with doing a complete export of all my pictures from Photos to a folder on BLUE as insurance towards a future migration to a non-Apple product. Hope that's not going to become necessary.


This means BLUE will contain every photo I've ever taken. It pains me that I have to do all this extra work to ENSURE the integrity of my photos.


Finally, I am seriously considering using Photos, but not using iCloud Photos Library for a year or two. Sure, I won't be able to see all my photos on all my devices, but I also won't waste entire days uploading libraries or searching the web trying to understand what is actually going on. I don't need iCloud Photo Library for backup. I've understood how to backup up my files (not just pictures) to external disks and the Cloud for years.


Best of luck.

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User profile for user: PaulCommentary
PaulCommentary
User level: Level 1
67 points

Jun 26, 2015 7:45 AM in response to NixyJ77

NicyJ77,


This is a well described scenario and one that many of us have had. We've also had many of the same questions you are asking. And, if you read blogs and listen to podcasts, many well-versed mac users have had these questions too.


The most important question (in my opinion) you are asking is: how do iCloud Photo Library and a backup (be it Time Machine or Carbon Copy Cloner or other) work together after a backup or transfer to new Mac? The correct workflow for preserving your pictures AND THEIR ASSOCIATED CURATION needs to be clear. Furthermore, that workflow should not require the download of your entire iCloud Photo Library if you have a local copy of your Photos Library.


Some insights:


Some will suggest that you make no use of any local backups, create a new empty Photos library and let all your pictures download to it from iCloud Photo Library. That is not desirable for two reasons (1) The iCloud Photos Library is not a complete backup of your curation. For example, it does not backup any projects you have created. (2) It is a celestial waste of bandwidth and your time when you already have a local backup.


Others will suggest that you are not compelled to use Photos and can go back to iPhoto and/or Aperture. That's true for now. And in fact if I could do it over again, knowing ahead of time the headaches with Photos, I would have completely ignored Photos for at least a year as Apple worked the bugs out with it and iCloud Photo Library, Aperture was working fine. [But at that time, I suspected Aperture would not support newly released cameras, or be updated to work with new versions of the Flickr API, or integrate properly with other Yosemite features, or so on. Apple silent on many of those issues, so uncertainty occurs.]


Others will suggest that you restore the library from backup as you have and let the sync with iCloud Photos Library sort things out. My personal experience is that the messages you see about "re-uploading" and "adding" are wrong, the result of sloppy programming in Photos. And that what is actually happening is a "diff". I believe this to be the case because the time for this operation was about 1/7th of the original upload. This did eventually work for me. HOWEVER others, many others, many experienced others, have reported a complete re-upload with duplication of many photos. So you are right to feel complete uncertainty as to trusting this workflow. I still do and hope I don't have to deal with it again.


Here's what I've done to protect my library and pictures in the meantime:


  • I bought a brand new separate hard drive (CALL IT BLUE) of 2 TB for <$100. (My pictures occupy 100 GB by the way.). I will use this drive to keep many versions of my libraries over the next year until the Photos problems become sorted out.
  • I went to old backups and found my iPhoto library prior to the Photos upgrade and copied it to BLUE. Many reasons for this. But one is this will keep all the work on books and slideshows I did in iPhoto around since the migration of books and slideshow to Photos is "lossy".
  • On the day I bought BLUE, I copied my current Photos library to BLUE and added the current date to the name. Every few weeks, I do that again. I figure I can keep about 10 copies of the library here.
  • When I take pictures with my Canon DSLR, I first copy them to BLUE, and then add them to Photos. Two independent copies then.
  • On my iPhone, I've enabled Dropbox backup of Photos using Carousel. Every few weeks, I copy those photos from Dropbox to BLUE. Two independent copies then.
  • Finally, I am experimenting with doing a complete export of all my pictures from Photos to a folder on BLUE as insurance towards a future migration to a non-Apple product. Hope that's not going to become necessary.


This means BLUE will contain every photo I've ever taken. It pains me that I have to do all this extra work to ENSURE the integrity of my photos.


Finally, I am seriously considering using Photos, but not using iCloud Photos Library for a year or two. Sure, I won't be able to see all my photos on all my devices, but I also won't waste entire days uploading libraries or searching the web trying to understand what is actually going on. I don't need iCloud Photo Library for backup. I've understood how to backup up my files (not just pictures) to external disks and the Cloud for years.


Best of luck.

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User profile for user: thiagocp
thiagocp
User level: Level 1
11 points

Jun 26, 2015 9:05 PM in response to NixyJ77

I've got the same problem, I recently had to format my Macbook, so i made a backup with time machine, but i had a backup of all photos on iCloud. After formatting, i restored my photos library and choose it on my photos application, but when i activated to use iCloud somehow it is trying to upload all photos again, but they are already there!, so it complains saying that i don't have enough space. I don't know what to do. I don't want to delete the library and download all photos again. I have some faces recognized and i don't want to lose them.

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iCloud Photo Library to Mac - expected behaviour after Time Machine restore??

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