Freeing up space following iPhoto to Photos move

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Freeing up space following iPhoto to Photos move

When I was prompted to migrate my iPhoto library to Photos, I did not realise that I would end up with double the hard drive space being consumed.

My Macbook Pro (mid 2012 retina) has a 512GB hard drive, and my original library took up ca 227GB, so woops, nearly all the capacity was suddenly consumed.

So, step 1, to be safe, I copied the old iPhoto library to an external drive, where it has now consumed 227GB.

I then deleted the original iPhoto library from my Macbook's hard drive, expecting to free up the same ca 227GB, and emptied the trash.

But now, it looks like I have only gained about 10GB free space by doing this, so my almost full hard drive is still almost full.

Is there some clean-up process I have to follow, to free up the other 200+GB that I thought I would be able to get back?

TIA

MacBook Pro (Retina, Mid 2012), OS-X 10.11

Posted on Nov 29, 2015 2:35 PM

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Answer 1

Yer_Man

Level 10

162,402 points

Nov 29, 2015 2:40 PM in response to TBM3

When I was prompted to migrate my iPhoto library to Photos, I did not realise that I would end up with double the hard drive space being consumed.

It doesn't.

While both Libraries claim to manage 227gigs of space, by the magic of unix hard links, it's the same 227 gigs, pretty much. In other words, both libraries point to the same files on the HD. So, deleting the iPhoto Library got back 10 gigs as that's all the content of the library that was exclusive to iPhoto.

Bottom line, you still have the same amount of space used as you had, nothing has really changed.

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Answer 2

TBM3 Author

Level 1

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Nov 30, 2015 3:28 AM in response to Yer_Man

Hi Terence

What you say, does make sense, certainly. Finder showed the 2 libraries, which did seem somewhat confusing.

Therefore I am going to need a decent disk clean-up utility so that I can free up significant space on my MBP hard-drive.

Something that identifies duplicates for starters!

Any recommendations?

TIA

Tony B

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Answer 3

Yer_Man

Level 10

162,402 points

Dec 24, 2015 3:37 AM in response to TBM3

No, and bluntly, I would be very very careful of any so-called "clean-up" "tune-uo" or similar utilities, most of which exist for the primary purpose of separating the unwary from their money.

Specifically, a lot of these apps claim to "clean up" by deleting caches. This recovers some disk space, sure, but only until all those caches are recreated again, next time you use those apps - and that also has the effect of slowing those apps down. Used on media libraries - i.e. on iPhoto, iTunes etc. - the results can be catastrophic.

Why do you think you have duplicate?

There is no way to clean up space on your HD without deleting material. No utility can decide what is unneeded, only you can do that.

If space is an issue you can move your Photos, iPhoto, iTunes, Aperture, iMovie and FCP libraries to external disks.

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