Can't sync Photos from old MBP

[T Coma]

My wife takes care of her limited computer needs with her work laptop. However, she has been uploading all the photos from her iphone to her 2009 MBP with an SSD which is still running fine, albeit limited to El Cap. It runs TM and CCC to external drives.

I recently got shared 2TB iCloud so the family can access all of their photos from their phones. Everyone can do this except her. I cannot get the old MBP to sync to the cloud. All the settings seem to be correct in her iCloud settings, including selecting "iCloud Agent" [EDIT: I meant "Photos Agent") in the El Cap sync list. While I presume that Migration Assistant to a new MBP would work, I'm trying to be more practical at the moment and find a less expensive fix to this dysfunction.

Short of buying a new mac, does anyone have a suggestion on how to get those photos and albums synced to icloud?

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

2009 might still store photos in iPhoto (app) instead of Photos app. If so, you may have to upgrade that app. And if I recall correctly, there is a dedicated app (iPhoto library upgrader tool) to help bring very old iPhoto libraries up to a level where they can work with Photos.

If it's not that, there are a LOT of references online about problems with El Capitan and iCloud, so it may just be too old... or maybe it doesn't work with shared space.

See this for some related information.

 

[Cyby-CyberDog]

iCloud Photos requires at least macOS Sierra (10.12) to function properly. Since her MacBook Pro (2009) supports up to macOS El Capitan (10.11.6), it does not meet the minimum system requirements for iCloud Photos.

To access iCloud photos, she can use a web browser to visit iCloud.com and sign in with her Apple ID. This allows her to view and manage photos (including adding photos to the library) without relying on the Photos app.

 

[FreakinEurekan]

El Cap is definitely Photos, not iPhoto - that change happened in Yosemite. But yes, iCloud Photos doesn't sync properly with El Cap.

You could look into Open Core Legacy Patcher to run a newer version of macOS; the 2009 MBP should have enough horsepower to do that. Or, migrate her photos over to a new user account on a different (existing) household Mac so that they'll upload from there. Once her photos are synced then on an ongoing basis new photos will sync from her iPhone directly, and as mentioned above she can use Web access to see the photos on her '09.

 

[T Coma]

El Cap is definitely Photos, not iPhoto - that change happened in Yosemite. But yes, iCloud Photos doesn't sync properly with El Cap.

You could look into Open Core Legacy Patcher to run a newer version of macOS; the 2009 MBP should have enough horsepower to do that. Or, migrate her photos over to a new user account on a different (existing) household Mac so that they'll upload from there. Once her photos are synced then on an ongoing basis new photos will sync from her iPhone directly, and as mentioned above she can use Web access to see the photos on her '09.

Well, I tried what I thought would be a slow, but easy, method which was to copy the Photos Library to an external drive, then access that library from my wife's user account on my M1 MBP. Double-clicking on the library file/package started Photos, but said the library had to be repaired. It started that process and then froze up at 8% and didn't move all night. I'll try copying again onto a different external disk but 200GB is a long slog at USB2 speed to find out there is some incompatibility. I'm thinking of just exporting the files individually and then reimporting them. Sure, it will also take ages to complete, but there shouldn't be any "repairs" needed.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

As I recall the Photos repair process, it will do that- seem to hang for a LONG time at some percentage- but if you just leave it alone and let it keep "repairing" it it will suddenly jump to "complete" and then load. Don't go in expecting to see some kind of steady progress on the bar/percentage. This fooled me a few times too where I assumed the process had just crashed/locked up. The bigger the library, the longer it will take to "repair." 2TB will take a LONG time.

I suggest a repeat try before you go to bed and then just leave it to repair all night long, all day the next day, all night that night, etc. In short: give it much more time than seems reasonable and you might get to the desired destination.

Since it's a copy of the original, no consequence other than your wife not having use of her MB for the time you give it to fully "repair."

After you get this, you might explore splitting 2TB into 2 or more smaller libraries if there is some natural split. For example, if a chunk of the library is videos, consider exporting all of them and using the TV app (or iTunes if she's still rocking that on the old Mac) to organize/access/play videos. Some people have a mix of personal & work photos in one library. Consider splitting those out to two libraries. Some people take pictures of important documents instead of scanning them. If she does this, those might also be better suited for a Documents library. You still end up with 2TB of photos but with this idea individual libraries might be considerably smaller than 2TB. You/she may even find that her main library will then fit nicely on the internal drive while these much less frequently other libraries could live on an external drive.