Discrepancy in Photo numbers

[Speed38]

Yesterday, I helped a senior migrate her data from a 2011 MB Pro to an M2 MB Pro.
All went well, save for Photos
Here are the photo counts on her various devices following the update:
M2 Mac 4819
Old Mac 2918
iPad 4189
iPhone 4189
iCloud 4187

Where do I even start in an effort to sort this out.
I have an iMac, an iPad, and an iPhone and my photos are syncing correctly among all my devices.
I have checked the settings on her iPhone/iPad/M2 against mine and they are the same.
I am completely baffled as to what to do next.
Any offers of help sincerely appreciated.

 

[splifingate]

Yesterday, I helped a senior migrate her data from a 2011 MB Pro to an M2 MB Pro.
All went well, save for Photos
Here are the photo counts on her various devices following the update:
M2 Mac 4819
Old Mac 2918
iPad 4189
iPhone 4189
iCloud 4187

Where do I even start in an effort to sort this out.
I have an iMac, an iPad, and an iPhone and my photos are syncing correctly among all my devices.
I have checked the settings on her iPhone/iPad/M2 against mine and they are the same.
I am completely baffled as to what to do next.
Any offers of help sincerely appreciated.

Those counts are quite anagram-ish (is your count on the Old Mac correctly typed?), but *far* closer than I'm currently getting:

MP -- 14,644 Photos / 1,154 Videos
iMac -- 13,792 Photos / 1,088 Videos
iPhone -- 14,374 Photos / 1,136 Videos
iCloud -- 13,792 Photos / 1,088 Videos

I just recently installed Monterey to the iMac, with a fresh sync to iCloud, and it matches iCloud

Both the iP and MP have higher counts, but (over time) I've Imported/Duplicated/etc. quite a few photo/vids.

If I compare "Imports" in the Photos app, I get:

MP -- 9,591
iMac -- 9,590
iPhone -- 9,672
iCloud -- [no option]

I have no reason to believe that I am missing anything, but how how is one to easily tell at-a-glance with over 14K of assets?!

I have multiple backups of my .photoslibrary in various places (currently in the laborious process if sorting/culling), so I am reasonably confident that nothing is permanently lost.

I regularly duplicate the Photos Library.photoslibrary and save it somewhere outside the Pictures folder for archival (NAS/other Cloud in my case) as an extra safety check in case something wonky happens with the Photos sync process (tried&true, but counts like these don't instill Full Confidence).

Not a solution--really--but the counts on her other devices are greater than the Old Mac, so it's probable that everything stored there is already stored on the others.

 

[Speed38]

Another question:

Am I doing the right thing when I tell her to copy _this_ file to a USB thumb drive...

~/User/Pictures/Photos Library.photoslibrary

…so that if we somehow make a hash of her Photos in the Photos.app on the M2, we can restore those photos by moving this file from the thumb drive back to the M2?

If this is so, does it matter how the thumb drive is formatted?

Should it be APFS?

Many thanks,

 

[splifingate]

Another question:

Am I doing the right thing when I tell her to copy _this_ file to a USB thumb drive...

~/User/Pictures/Photos Library.photoslibrary

…so that if we somehow make a hash of her Photos in the Photos.app on the M2, we can restore those photos by moving this file from the thumb drive back to the M2?

If this is so, does it matter how the thumb drive is formatted?

Should it be APFS?

Many thanks,

I do not believe it matters that the drive is formatted APFS, but you will not be able to access it with OS X prior to High Sierra (or Windows IIRC). If you're only going to read it with the M2, APFS is a good choice.

It would be wise to re-name the copy as something like "Original-Photos-Library.photoslibrary" or "Photos Library.photoslibrary.oldmac" just to make sure you can differentiate between the two.

You can switch between libraries at any time. See:

Designate a System Photo Library in Photos - Apple Support

If you have multiple photo libraries on your Mac, you can choose which library to use with iCloud Photos and Shared Albums.

support.apple.com

Regards.

 

[Speed38]

Got it and thank you.

 

[splifingate]

Got it and thank you.

yw