HT204410: Adjust the size of your Photos library to store it in iCloud Photo Library

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Greg Alexander1

Q: 3 months uploading, and now it restarts?

I've been uploading my photos for over 3 months. There are now over 550GB up in the cloud.

 

It was 2GB from finishing, but was in a limbo between paused and resuming. I restarted my Mac, and it's now uploading the whole 550GB again.

 

Is this a common bug?

Can't it see the 550GB already there and not re-upload the same photos?

How do I make sure it doesn't restart again in September once it's uploaded again?!?

 

Thanks everyone for any advice :-/

Posted on May 5, 2016 3:55 PM

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Q: 3 months uploading, and now it restarts?

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  • by LarryHN,

    LarryHN LarryHN May 5, 2016 4:05 PM in response to Greg Alexander1
    Level 10 (84,565 points)
    Photos for Mac
    May 5, 2016 4:05 PM in response to Greg Alexander1

    It is not a bug at all - what exactly did you do (just rebooting your Mac does not reu-pload your Photos library - only turning ICPL off and on or moving the library or rebuilding it or other action so the status of the sync is unknown restarts teh upload (and the new one is much faster in my experience since it is checking not really uploading)

     

    LN

  • by Greg Alexander1,

    Greg Alexander1 Greg Alexander1 May 5, 2016 6:47 PM in response to LarryHN
    Level 1 (44 points)
    Photos for Mac
    May 5, 2016 6:47 PM in response to LarryHN

    No, we've restarted the computer more than 10 times in the last few months.

     

    My library size (via Get Info) is 641GB. When we activated iCloud library, it said it was uploading about 450GB. I figured the difference is thumbnails and other overhead. Over the 3 months it got down to the last few GB and stopped. The Resume button wasn't available, but it said it was paused.

     

    Then I restarted the machine and it started uploading. At first it said there was 6GB left, then 20 (last night), now 110GB (this morning, still going up slowly). Perhaps it's finished uploading 450GB but actually has a secondary upload of the remaining 200GB?

     

    I'm hoping it's not doing the original 450GB again. The speed of upload is still under 1Mbps so it's not cross checking for existing files (probably).
    (edit: Just checked, currently 523GB used in iCloud).

  • by Greg Alexander1,

    Greg Alexander1 Greg Alexander1 May 7, 2016 4:04 PM in response to LarryHN
    Level 1 (44 points)
    Photos for Mac
    May 7, 2016 4:04 PM in response to LarryHN

    Interestingly, 40 hours ago it said "uploading 60,748 items (3.01GB of 135.86GB)". (and about 10% of graph)

    Now it says "uploading 53,349 items (3.01 GB of 215.45 GB)"  (and about 20% of graph).

     

    It seems when I added the latest import it then had 3.01GB to upload.  Now it's hopefully checking off item after item... which is why number of items is going down as it goes through and cross checks the whole library. It's uploading at full speed as it does this, but the GB uploaded hasn't changed for several days.

     

    So the number of items is going down. I expect the graph and the items accurately show how far through it is.

    While the 3GB and the increasing total are unimportant and misleading in this case.