Full iCloud photos backup with "optimising storage" enabled

[lietsche]

Hi,

until recently I had my iCloud photo library (900 GB) fully stored on an external disk connected to my Mac mini.
Now I have a MBP 16" Max with 1TB SSD and was wondering if there is a way to have my photo library on my main account in my MBP (with optimize Mac storage enabled) and still be able somehow to do a full backup of my iCloud photos to an external drive?
Could I, for example, create another user "Photos" on my MBP, link that user as well to my iCloud account and to my iCloud photos library and store that library on an external disk and like this do some full backups of my cloud photos from time to time? So I would have two iCloud photo libraries on one computer, one on my main account with optimize Mac storage enabled, and one on another account downloading all originals to an external drive... Would that work or are there better solutions?

Any help is appreciated,
thanks in advance

 

[lietsche]

I called Apple support and explained them my proposed workflow/solution. This is the way.

 

[Brian33]

Clever! I think it's a good idea; I'd never thought about having two user accounts on my Mac both signed into my Apple ID.

I think that the library of the alternate user ("Photos" in your example) won't be updated unless that user is logged in on your Mac. Something to think about. Each time you reboot, you'd have to remember to log that user in, I guess.

 

[lietsche]

Indeed, you would need to login to the alternate user account "photos" (and open the app Photos) from time to time (whenever you think it is time to backup your new photos made), so that the originals from iCloud can be downloaded to the external disk photos library (backup)...

 

[HDFan]

Make sure you implement a 3-2-1 backup strategy for your photos if you care about them.

 

[lietsche]

Make sure you implement a 3-2-1 backup strategy for your photos if you care about them.

Absolutely! (and other important data...)

 

[ignatius345]

Clever! I think it's a good idea; I'd never thought about having two user accounts on my Mac both signed into my Apple ID.

I actually used to do this just to make a "distraction free" writing account. I had one main account with email, web browser, etc all open, and then a second account signed into the same Apple ID but with no email, Messages or much of anything else set up. It worked great for me. Things were synced with Dropbox at first and then iCloud Drive later on.

The only reason I stopped doing it is that starting around maybe Mojave my computer started dragging horribly when I had both accounts open. Like, massive amounts of beachballing and weird hangups. This was happening on both my main iMac and my MacBook Air. I was also getting weird Apple ID authenticaion loops. I never understood why it was happening, but assumed it was some change in the way MacOS handles iCloud accont. Anyway, as soon as I stopped running the same Apple ID/second account setup, it cleared up.