Confused about disk space with Photos library

Question

Confused about disk space with Photos library

I understand that Photos uses hard links, and that therefore the Photos library should not be taking up very much more space than the old Aperture library. But in a sense, I believe that this isn't strictly true, and 't is actually taking up that amount of space.

My current Photos library is 174 GB. The old Aperture library I imported back in April is 155 GBs. I have a couple of other folders in Pictures, which accounts for maybe 10 MBs. Finder reports my Pictures folder as taking up 330 GBs.

Worse, the entire hard disk (which is 500 GB) says that I only have about 8 GBs free. When I look at which folders are taking up the space, it seems the 330 GBs is accurate, so the vast majority of the disk usage is the duplicated libraries.

I was sort of thinking maybe I really had an extra 155 GBs or something, because the old Aperture files were now linked to the Photos library. But that does not appear to be the case.

Can someone explain this to me? I want to blow away the Aperture library, because I have no intention of ever using Aperture again, but I worry that there are files in that library that never made it into Photos, thus the duplication.

Thanks!

MacBook Pro, OS X El Capitan (10.11.2), Mid-2009, 8 GB RAM, 500 GB HD

Posted on Jan 8, 2016 6:12 AM

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Answer 1

léonie

Level 10

200,699 points

Jan 8, 2016 7:13 AM in response to Jon Baumgartner

My current Photos library is 174 GB. The old Aperture library I imported back in April is 155 GBs. I have a couple of other folders in Pictures, which accounts for maybe 10 MBs. Finder reports my Pictures folder as taking up 330 GBs.

The storage for hard linked files is reported incorrectly.

That is because hard linked files are indistinguishable from the original files, and so the storage is counted twice by the Finder.

See: Six Colors: The (hard) link between Photos and iPhoto

The Photos library that is created from your Aperture library should have approximately the same size as the original Aperture Library, but the image files inside the library are stored on the same disk blocks as the same images in the original Aperture library.

But once you start working with the new photos Library, more and more links will break for the preview images. If you edit a photo, a new preview will created, and that will no longer be linked to the preview in Aperture. So there will be less and less saved storage. Also, if you used a custom size for previews in Aperture, the new previews in Photos will need extra storage.

Or, if you are using iCloud Photo Library the syncing with iCloud can break the references. Originals on your Mac could be replaced by originals from iCloud when syncing and checking for duplicates.

If you are no longer using the Aperture library, move it to an external drive to free storage on the internal drive. If you should discover missing photos in the Photos library, you can access the Aperture library on the external drive as well.

See this document on what kind of drive to use: Use locally mounted Mac OS X Extended volumes for your Aperture library

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Answer 2

Jan 8, 2016 7:41 AM in response to léonie

Thank you! That makes perfect sense.

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Answer 3

léonie

Level 10

200,699 points

Jan 8, 2016 7:48 AM in response to Jon Baumgartner

You're welcome 🙂

Good Luck for cleaning up your storage.

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