How to Optimise a Humungous 500GB Photos Library?

[Stevie-weevie]

Hi all

First time post! Hope you will be able to offer some advice

My Photos library is 67,000 items and 490GB. Within that there is 545 movie clips which amount to 45 GB. I don't think there are many duplicates, but I have not checked with one of the available apps as yet.

I have a new 2018 iMac with 1TB SSD and 8GB RAM. Total occupied space on hard drive is 650GB. Free space is 350GB.

So far so good - no problems with Photos, but intuitively I know that is a massive number of files and bytes for the Photos app to be handling. Here are my thoughts, please advise:

1. Should I export my movie clips and remove 45GB from the Photos library? (If so any thoughts on where they might go? Maybe a separate Photos library just for movies?)

2. Should I invest I Power Photos or similar) to check for duplicates?

3. How big is too big when it comes to Photos libraries?

4. Obviously the root cause is taking (and then keeping) too many photos - I need to get my family to become more disciplined in (a) taking fewer photos and then (b) being more rigorous in keeping only the very best - delete from the phone straightaway before they sync with the cloud.

5. Any other ideas / suggestions / comments?

Thanks in advance folks
Steve

 

[Steve121178]

You can start optimising by deleting anything that's no longer required & archiving photos/data you rarely access on a NAS or external drive.

 

[T'hain Esh Kelch]

PowerPhotos for sure to remove duplicates. You'll likely be surprised how many you have, and likely worth it in the long run.

Removing 10% of the library (The movies) will likely not make much of a difference.

The only real impact is to do something about your family. They don't need to save 15 version of the same selfie, 3 times a day. Or that buket of flowers that was pretty.

 

[mollyc]

There is no such thing as too many photos.