John Gilliam

Q: Restored Photos Library wants to sync entire library to iCloud?

I recently backed up my user data via Carbon Copy Cloner and moved the user data to a brand new MacBook Pro.

My Photos library is about 134 GB. I have a 200 GB iCloud storage plan.

When I open Photos, all of my photos are there, but when I turn on iCloud library in Photos' preferences, it wants to sync the entire library (and thus asks me to upgrade my iCloud storage plan to 400 GB. Is there any way for Photos to just resume syncing... which would just download the latest fifty or so photos from iCloud?

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X El Capitan (10.11)

Posted on Oct 19, 2015 12:06 PM

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Q: Restored Photos Library wants to sync entire library to iCloud?

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  • by léonie,Solvedanswer

    léonie léonie Oct 19, 2015 12:12 PM in response to John Gilliam
    Level 10 (106,848 points)
    iLife
    Oct 19, 2015 12:12 PM in response to John Gilliam

    Photos has to compare the restored library to the photos in iCloud, but it will only upload the photos that are not already in iCloud.

     

    If you want to omit the comparing stage, start with a new empty iCloud Photo Library on your new mac.  The  all photos from iCloud will download to the new library. You will save the lengthy comparison, but you will lose all faces thumbnails, because they do not upload to iCloud, see:  Use Photos and iCloud Photo Library on multiple Mac computers - Apple Support

  • by John Gilliam,

    John Gilliam John Gilliam Oct 19, 2015 12:29 PM in response to léonie
    Level 1 (24 points)
    iTunes
    Oct 19, 2015 12:29 PM in response to léonie

    Thanks, I just decided to temporarily upgrade my storage plan to accommodate this, as I can change it back again. However, I don't have what Photos/iCloud thinks is enough local storage (over 125 GB) to store the originals, so I had to choose to locally store optimized versions for now. Once it is done doing it's thing, I hope to reduce the iCloud library size as well as turn back on storing originals on my local computer.

     

    Stay tuned....

  • by John Gilliam,

    John Gilliam John Gilliam Oct 19, 2015 1:12 PM in response to léonie
    Level 1 (24 points)
    iTunes
    Oct 19, 2015 1:12 PM in response to léonie

    After analyzing the photos, it is now in the process of uploading 15,000 photos. I really hope it doesn't create 15,000 duplicates, but that looks like what is happening.

  • by John Gilliam,

    John Gilliam John Gilliam Oct 19, 2015 1:30 PM in response to John Gilliam
    Level 1 (24 points)
    iTunes
    Oct 19, 2015 1:30 PM in response to John Gilliam

    Check that, now it wants to download that many photos. Ugh. If I get 15,000 duplicates, I will be upset.

  • by léonie,

    léonie léonie Oct 19, 2015 1:36 PM in response to John Gilliam
    Level 10 (106,848 points)
    iLife
    Oct 19, 2015 1:36 PM in response to John Gilliam

    Even if iCloud is saying "uploading", it will usually only compare to iCloud.

    Open the Console.app. It will show you, what iCloud is doing.

     

    You could type "photomodel" into the Console search field. Then I am seeing the process that is doing the duplicate checking:

    Screen Shot 2015-10-13 at 17.18.56GMT.png

  • by cisco1976,

    cisco1976 cisco1976 Oct 20, 2015 12:12 AM in response to léonie
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 20, 2015 12:12 AM in response to léonie

    Aloha,

     

    I have thousands of photos that I do not want to load on iCloud Photo Library (wanna keep them on my iMac), but I do want to turn it on so I can share newer photos between my devices (ipad, iphone, iMac, macair). If I turn iCloud Photo Library on, can I prevent some photos from loading? or is it gonna grab all my photos and load on iCloud?

    Thank for any help/advice

  • by léonie,

    léonie léonie Oct 20, 2015 3:52 AM in response to cisco1976
    Level 10 (106,848 points)
    iLife
    Oct 20, 2015 3:52 AM in response to cisco1976

    It is all or nothing.  iCloud Photo Library will upload all photos in the library that you enable for iCloud.  If you do not want all your photos in iCloud distribute the photos across two libraries, one for iCloud, one  to be used only locally.