Can I use more disk space for Photos on iCloud than I have in my local device?

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Can I use more disk space for Photos on iCloud than I have in my local device?

Hi, I sucessfully upgraded to Yosemite and moved from iPhoto to Photo App. I also synched my Photo library to iCloud Photo Library, using the "optimize disk space option". So far, everything went fine.

My challenge is that I will be running out of disk space on my Mac Mini soon, and I have still tons of pictures sitting on other devices. My hope was that I could pour all my Photo collections together, using iCloud Photo Library. Certainly, the iCloud space needed for this would exceed the capacity of my local drive.

I wonder if there is a way to handle this, e.g. by marking pictures dated before day X as "archived" on iCould, so that they will only pulled down to local devices when they are actually demended for. How are people with large, and I mean really large, picture databases handling this? I don't think that I should be installing terrabytes of local drives when there is iCloud Photo Library. Am I correct?

Thanks a bunch

U1F

Mac mini (Early 2009), OS X Yosemite (10.10)

Posted on Sep 30, 2015 10:21 AM

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Answer 1

Old Toad

Level 10

215,864 points

Sep 30, 2015 10:42 AM in response to ulfinator

If you select the Optimize Mac Storage option in Photo's iCloud preference pane Photos will store smaller versions of the image files on your Mac as you begin to fill up your boot drive.

However, that option will require you to download the full sized original whenever you want to print a photo or use it in a project. That can be annoying depending on the time required for download.

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Answer 2

ulfinator Author

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Sep 30, 2015 11:54 AM in response to Old Toad

Thanks for your reply. This is understood. However, even when using the optimize disk option, the disk will be full at some time. Because also the small versions use disk space. To put my question more simply: Can I put an "infinite ammount of pics" to iCloud, while my local drive is limited?

Thanks

U1F

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Answer 3

Old Toad

Level 10

215,864 points

Sep 30, 2015 11:59 AM in response to ulfinator

No, not unlimited. It's been reported that an optimized version of a library can be a low as about 10% of the full sized version on mobile devices. Don't know about Macs. I'll try to round up some users with more experience with the iCloud Photo Library and get them here to help answer that question.

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Answer 4

ulfinator Author

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Sep 30, 2015 12:22 PM in response to Old Toad

Awesome, that sounds great! If I take your response for granted, I would need to size my local disk space always as much as minimum 90% of all my photos (considering only pictures on my box, calculating without any buffer space). I think that a modern cloud solution has to offer more than that, and I hope Apple has been thinking further than this. People should be able to drop all the pics of their lives into one space (provided they purchased an iCloud plan with sufficient capacity), without having to double their local HD capacity with each child joining the family...

I look forward to reading the experiences of other advanced users.

Cheers

U1f

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Answer 5

léonie

Level 10

200,675 points

Sep 30, 2015 12:45 PM in response to ulfinator

To put my question more simply: Can I put an "infinite ammount of pics" to iCloud, while my local drive is limited?

You cannot put an infinite amount of photos into iCloud Photo Library, since the largest storage plan for iCloud allows max. 1 TB of cloud storage. (see: iCloud storage pricing - Apple Support)

Optimize Mac Storage will reduce the size of the local library on your iMac, but not indefinitely. You will at least need the storage for thumbnails to be able to browse the library.

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Answer 6

ulfinator Author

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Oct 1, 2015 2:08 AM in response to léonie

The space limitation of 1 TB is also known. Let's try yet another version of my question:

Provided I wanted to have 1 TB ob pictures on iCloud - how much local disk space will I have to allocate to pictures?

I do not believe that it will be sufficient to calculate local disk space on thumbnail size only as I did not see any intelligence yet which would optimize disk space in a way that e.g. pictures of a certain age should be locally available as thumbnail only (this would be like an archiving solution that I mentioned in the first place).

Say I have a local HD of 250 GB, 100 GB free. Now I keep adding pictures to my library in order to make use of my 1 TB iCloud plan. This will keep working until I added close to 100 GB of pictures. Maybe after the optimization kicks in, I can make the 100, as the OS needs tome free disk to work. However at some point, the disk will be just full. AFAIK there is no option whatsoever to control the local space used for pictures and thus preventing me from knocking out my system by continuously adding pics.

I mean: No option other than buying a local 1TB hard drive. Which cannot be the goal. Right?

Cheers

U1f

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Answer 7

léonie

Level 10

200,675 points

Oct 1, 2015 2:52 AM in response to ulfinator

ulfinator wrote:

The space limitation of 1 TB is also known. Let's try yet another version of my question:

Provided I wanted to have 1 TB ob pictures on iCloud - how much local disk space will I have to allocate to pictures?

I do not believe that it will be sufficient to calculate local disk space on thumbnail size only as I did not see any intelligence yet which would optimize disk space in a way that e.g. pictures of a certain age should be locally available as thumbnail only (this would be like an archiving solution that I mentioned in the first place).

Say I have a local HD of 250 GB, 100 GB free. Now I keep adding pictures to my library in order to make use of my 1 TB iCloud plan. This will keep working until I added close to 100 GB of pictures. Maybe after the optimization kicks in, I can make the 100, as the OS needs tome free disk to work. However at some point, the disk will be just full. AFAIK there is no option whatsoever to control the local space used for pictures and thus preventing me from knocking out my system by continuously adding pics.

I mean: No option other than buying a local 1TB hard drive. Which cannot be the goal. Right?

Cheers

U1f

YYou need the local copy on an external drive anyway. Apple strongly recommends to back up all your iCloud data locally.

KEep a non-optimized version of your library on an external drive and a optimized version on your internal drive.

yyou can work with the library on the internal drive, if you do not want to connect the external drive.

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