Downloading iCloud Photo Library is stuck

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Level 1

10 points

Downloading iCloud Photo Library is stuck

I'm trying to download my Photo Library from iCloud to an external hard drive, so I have an offline backup. I have formatted the external drive as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and set it to be the System Photo Library. There is 1.47 TB of memory available on the external drive. My Photo Library is large (about 34,000 items). The Photos Preferences iCloud window says "Downloading 33,181 items" but it's been stuck on that number for hours and it doesn't seem to be doing any downloading. Any ideas on how to get it moving?

MacBook Air, iOS 10.1.1

Posted on Feb 18, 2018 11:56 PM

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Answer 1

léonie

Level 10

200,669 points

Feb 19, 2018 9:02 AM in response to Picoides

Downloading such a large library will take several days, and you may not see any progress at all during the first few hours. For my 50000 GB library it takes usually five days to download most of the photos. Is your drive locally plugged in, as it should be, and not a NAS?

Does the size of the Photos Library change, if you check the size in the Finder?

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Answer 2

léonie

Level 10

200,669 points

Feb 19, 2018 10:00 AM in response to Picoides

The size of the Photos Library does change, but very slowly.

That is fine, then. The download may be slow, because Photos has to process the items to create previews, and it will take a long time especially for videos in the library.

. My drive is plugged into my Apple Thunderbolt Display.

it may be somewhat faster with a direct connection.

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Answer 3

léonie

Level 10

200,669 points

Mar 8, 2018 12:33 AM in response to Picoides

Only one library at time can be the system photo library. If your library on the system drive has used "Optimize Storage", Photos will have removed the optimized versions, while the library is not syncing with iCloud Photo Library, because it then cannot access the originals in iCloud any longer. You should have seen a warning, when you opened the library, after you switched to a different system library. To get the missing photos back for the library on the system drive, enable iCloud Photo Library again for the library on your system drive. The download will be much quicker for an optimized library. The library on your external drive will stay unchanged as a backup, since it is not optimized.

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Answer 4

Picoides Author

Level 1

10 points

Feb 19, 2018 9:00 AM in response to léonie

Thank you, Léonie. My drive is plugged into my Apple Thunderbolt Display. I'm not on a network. Would it help to plug the drive into my MacBook Air directly, or does that matter?

The size of the Photos Library does change, but very slowly. It's at 3.71 GB now. It's helpful to know it can take several days and I may not see any progress for several hours. That knowledge will help me be patient!

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Answer 5

Picoides Author

Level 1

10 points

Mar 7, 2018 5:22 PM in response to léonie

Hi Léonie, It took nearly a week but all the photos eventually were downloaded to the external hard drive. Thanks for your help with that!

Now I have a new question. I thought my original Photos library would remain intact on my MacBook Air hard drive even though I had (temporarily) designated the new library on the external drive as my System Photo Library. But when I open Photos on my MacBook Air, there are only 98 photos in that (original) library (there were 33,000 before I started this backup project). Why did the original library disappear (almost) off my hard drive? I wanted to keep the original library on my MacBook Air and make a back-up copy on the hard drive. Can't this be done? Why did my original Photos library disappear off my computer, and why were 98 random photos left behind?

I'm afraid to change my original library back to the System Photo Library until I understand what's going on. This is very confusing.

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