JerryaAU

Q: Photos duplicating to Cloud on new iMac

I have just bought a new top of the range iMac 21.5 Retina. I used Migration Assistant to transfer document and Photos from my old mac mini to my new iMac. I went into Photos on the new iMac and turned on iCloud Photo Library. Photos on my new iMac now says it is uploading 8,229 items (3.07 GB of 24.61 GB). I am concerned that Photos is effectively duplicating all the Photos I already have in iCloud. At my current upload speeds I will probably have to wait a day or two for the upload to finish. Worse, if the duplicated photos get to iCloud they will then download onto all my other machines - the original mac mini, my iPad and iPhone. Can anyone help me?

 

Is Photos duplicating my Photos in the Cloud? If so how do I stop it? How do I remove the duplicates from iCloud.

 

Should I delete the Photos library on my new iMac and start with an empty one and let it fill down from iCloud?


Why did Migration Assistant do this - where did I go wrong?

Posted on Oct 22, 2015 7:59 AM

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Q: Photos duplicating to Cloud on new iMac

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  • by léonie,

    léonie léonie Oct 22, 2015 8:28 AM in response to JerryaAU
    Level 10 (106,848 points)
    iLife
    Oct 22, 2015 8:28 AM in response to JerryaAU

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

    Open the Console.app (it is in Applications > Utilities). The Console 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

     

    Should I delete the Photos library on my new iMac and start with an empty one and let it fill down from iCloud?

    That is a possibility.  But the library, that will download from iCloud will not have the Faces you labelled on your other Mac, and also only products (Books, Calendars) will be missing.   See:  Use Photos and iCloud Photo Library on multiple Mac computers - Apple Support

  • by JerryaAU,

    JerryaAU JerryaAU Oct 22, 2015 8:52 AM in response to léonie
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 22, 2015 8:52 AM in response to léonie

    Hi Léonie and thanks for your reply. I opened the console as you suggested, and typed photomodel in the search box. Nothing came up. If I just type photo in the search box I get 123 messages (out of 4000). Many of them are like these:

     

    22/10/2015 17:47:21.252 com.apple.photos.VideoConversionService[755]: 17:47:21.252 ERROR:    312: error -66680

    22/10/2015 17:42:20.644 Photos[3038]: Unable to get cached status information configuration client state 2

    22/10/2015 17:42:19.542 cloudphotosd[306]: Skipping operation <CSLibraryManagerFetchMissingResourcesOperation: 0x7fc44972ed20>, library manager operation duplicate to another operation

     

    If I look at Network Traffic in Activity monitor, it sure looks like data is being sent - at about 110 KB/sec which is broadly consistent with the 3.7 GB that Photos says it has uploaded over the last few hours.

     

    I have logged into iCloud in Safari to see if I can see any duplicates - I haven't found any, but then again I have 10,000 photos to check .. I think I will leave it for a day and see what happens.

     

    Thanks again for your help, please check back in a day or so because I may need more!

  • by léonie,Helpful

    léonie léonie Oct 22, 2015 10:47 AM in response to JerryaAU
    Level 10 (106,848 points)
    iLife
    Oct 22, 2015 10:47 AM in response to JerryaAU
    I have logged into iCloud in Safari to see if I can see any duplicates - I haven't found any, but then again I have 10,000 photos to check ..

    That is a good sign.

    Have you checked the total number of photos on https://www.icloud.com/#photos   ?

     

    If you select the Moments, you should be seeing the total number of photo in iCloud.

    Compare it to the number of photos in the Moments view on your Mac.

     

    Does the number of photos increase in iCloud?

  • by JerryaAU,

    JerryaAU JerryaAU Oct 22, 2015 10:38 AM in response to léonie
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 22, 2015 10:38 AM in response to léonie

    Hi Léonie - good news, give or take ...

     

    Photos on my (new) iMac shows 10,075 photos.

    Photos on my (old) mac mini shows 10,078 photos.  (Makes sense - I had earlier deleted 3 on the iMac)

    Photos on iCloud.com shows 10,110 photos (Not sure where the extra 35 have come from, but hey why expect computers to count)

    Some hours ago  Photos on my iMac said it had 9,448 items to upload

    It now says it has 7,940 items to upload

    Assuming 'items' means photos, that means it's already uploaded about 1500 photos - much more than the discrepancy of 35.

    So, fingers crossed, even if the entire photo library on my iMac is getting uploaded, it seems to be being discarded.

     

    I am hoping by tomorrow morning a lot more will have uploaded, so if there are any duplicates they will be easier to spot. In any case I can keep my eye on the total in iCloud.

     

    Thanks again for your brilliant help, you've stopped me panicking. I'll post again tomorrow.

  • by léonie,Helpful

    léonie léonie Oct 22, 2015 10:47 AM in response to JerryaAU
    Level 10 (106,848 points)
    iLife
    Oct 22, 2015 10:47 AM in response to JerryaAU

    You're welcome  

    Good Luck!

  • by JerryaAU,

    JerryaAU JerryaAU Oct 23, 2015 10:21 AM in response to léonie
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 23, 2015 10:21 AM in response to léonie

    léonie - It has just finished uploading ... and ... absolutely no sign of duplicates, so as you can imagine I am very relieved. There is a tiny disagreement about the number of photos - my Mac Mini says 10,079 and my iMac says 10,077 but I shall not quibble. Thank you so much for responding to my question.

     

    Just in case I ever need to do this again ... would it have been better NOT to use migration assistant for my Photos, but just turned on iCloud sharing for a new empty photo library on my new iMac and that way let iCloud download to my iMac? This would have been a lot faster, since downloading is much quicker than uploading. However, I was worried that if I did it that way, iCloud might treat it is a massive deletion and wipe all the photos on my other devices. Would that have happened?

     

    Anyhow, thanks again for your support, I am going to eat my dinner and then I shall upload a few snaps to my shiny new iMac.

  • by léonie,Solvedanswer

    léonie léonie Oct 23, 2015 12:22 PM in response to JerryaAU
    Level 10 (106,848 points)
    iLife
    Oct 23, 2015 12:22 PM in response to JerryaAU
    Just in case I ever need to do this again ... would it have been better NOT to use migration assistant for my Photos, but just turned on iCloud sharing for a new empty photo library on my new iMac and that way let iCloud download to my iMac?

    It is what I have done on my new Mac.  Create a new, empty library and let it download from iCloud Photo library. This way you will download all photos and albums from iCloud, and the libraries will be in sync from start. But all the faces you labelled will be missing, and your books and other projects.  DOn't do it, if you labelled a lot of faces and have books to save.

    After three month I have still not restored all the missing faces labels. I hope the next version of photos will allow to sync the faces labels as well in icloud.

  • by JerryaAU,

    JerryaAU JerryaAU Oct 23, 2015 1:28 PM in response to léonie
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 23, 2015 1:28 PM in response to léonie

    Ah well, though the uploading was unnecessary, I think I'm glad I did it the way I did - it would have annoyed me to lose stuff.  My commiserations to you.

     

    On a similar vein, I have just noticed that most of my Notes are now duplicated across all my devices.  I suspect this may have happened because my mac mini was still on Yosemite (where Notes had given up syncing with iOS 9), and Migration Assistant migrated my Notes onto my new iMac which then went up to the Cloud again and down again .. thus duplicating most of them. Strikes me that someone somewhere in Apple needs to give this a bit of thought.

     

    All the best léonie, cheers.

  • by léonie,

    léonie léonie Oct 24, 2015 7:26 AM in response to JerryaAU
    Level 10 (106,848 points)
    iLife
    Oct 24, 2015 7:26 AM in response to JerryaAU

    Cheers to you too