laowai184

Q: Unable to select 'iCloud Photo Library' after restoring Mac

Hello everyone, this is my first time asking a question here.

 

I have a MacBook Pro with a photo library of 57,214 photos (317GB) stored on an external hard drive. I recently uploaded all of these photos to iCloud Library (it took 5 days!) but just yesterday I had to do a clean OS install. Since then, I've been trying to set up Photos again.

 

My library on the HD is set as the system library, but when I select 'iCloud Photo Library' with the 'Download originals to this Mac' option, it selects it, starts to upload, then cancels it out. If I try to select it again, the same thing happens.

 

Screen Shot 2016-09-16 at 21.01.11.png

Two minutes later...

Screen Shot 2016-09-16 at 21.04.27.png

 

Can anyone advise what I can do? Do I need to delete the photos from the Cloud and try again?

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X El Capitan (10.11.6)

Posted on Sep 16, 2016 6:18 AM

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Q: Unable to select 'iCloud Photo Library' after restoring Mac

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  • by léonie,Solvedanswer

    léonie léonie Sep 16, 2016 6:32 AM in response to laowai184
    Level 10 (107,891 points)
    iCloud
    Sep 16, 2016 6:32 AM in response to laowai184

    The problem may be, that the free storage is not sufficient to download all originals from iCloud in addition to the photos already in your library.

     

    it might be easier to download the library from iCloud to an empty library instead of uploading the. library again.

    Do you have projects in your Photos Library, that you need to save, or invested a lot of work in naming Faces?

     

    if not, then move your current Photos Library to an external drive as a backup copy, and delete the library from your internal drive.

    • Launch Photos with the options key held down to bring up the Library Chooser panel. 
    • Select to create a new library.
    • Then make this new library your System Photos Library and enable iCloud.  Your photos and albums will start to download. This will be faster than uploading. again and merging the two libraries.

    But downloading will not restore the named faces and not the projects. SO you need to keep the original library to access your projects and have a reference for the faces that will need restoring.

  • by laowai184,

    laowai184 laowai184 Sep 16, 2016 6:48 AM in response to léonie
    ( points)
    Sep 16, 2016 6:48 AM in response to léonie

    That's a brilliant idea, thanks! I'll give that a try and report back if it helped or not!

  • by léonie,Helpful

    léonie léonie Sep 17, 2016 3:46 AM in response to laowai184
    Level 10 (107,891 points)
    iCloud
    Sep 17, 2016 3:46 AM in response to laowai184

    Yes, let us know, please, if there are unexpected problems.  Good Luck!

  • by laowai184,

    laowai184 laowai184 Sep 17, 2016 3:47 AM in response to léonie
    ( points)
    Sep 17, 2016 3:47 AM in response to léonie

    All is well; photos seem to be downloading as we speak (albums are being rebuilt, too) - thank you so much!

  • by léonie,

    léonie léonie Sep 17, 2016 5:41 AM in response to laowai184
    Level 10 (107,891 points)
    iCloud
    Sep 17, 2016 5:41 AM in response to laowai184

    You're welcome   I'm glad you could restore your library .