Import 350gb of photos to iCloud

[kenrohde]

Hey all - I am migrating my Google Photos to iCloud and have downloaded 350GB of photos from Google that are now stored on my external Hard Disc. Now, I want to upload those photos to iCloud however, I am a bit stuck as my internal HD only has 50GB of free space left. Are there any tools out there that can help me upload all these photos? Maybe some scripts or other clever tools that can read from an external harddisc? I read that Photos *must* have the files on the internal disc to be part of the Photos library.

Any suggestions welcomed!
(Yes, my iCloud has plenty of free space as I am on the 2TB tier and have >1TB of space left)

 

[RhetTbull]

You can store the Photos library on an external disk. See instructions from Apple. There's some downside to this -- namely that the disk must always be connected to access your Photos (not a great solution if you're using a laptop). Alternatively, you can keep the library on the internal disk, in Photos settings, enable "optimize Mac Storage" then import in batches and give Photos time between imports to completely upload the newly imported photos to iCloud and then optimize the photos on the Mac. When "optimize Mac storage" is enabled, Photos keeps only a low-resolution preview image on the local computer then downloads the original from iCloud as needed. You'll know Photos is done uploading if you look at the bottom of the "Photos view you'll see something like "Uploading x photos to iCloud" or "Synced to iCloud just now".

Edit: here's another two-step option that might work:

Create your System Library on the external disk using instructions above then import all the photos. Wait for Photos to completely sync all 350GB to iCloud. When done, create a new Photos library on the internal disk (hold down "Option" when starting Photos) then designate this new library as the System Library (in Photos settings) and enable "Optimize Mac Storage". Photos will then re-download optimized versions of all the photos from iCloud and when this is done you can delete the library on the external disk.