Large iCloud photo library performance

[samediff]

Hi, I have a large iPhoto/Photos library (200k photos/videos, around 1.1TB total taken over the last 20-odd years or so, mix of iphone and DSLR) and am thinking of moving it to the cloud. My iPhone 11 is 256GB. My mid-2012 MBP (non-retina, 16GB RAM) Photos app crawls especially when scrolling and importing new photos from SD cards- to be fair it is a HDD not SSD. I would like to move it to an external SSD and also enable cloud photos for everything (2TB plan).

Anyone else out there with large libraries? Will performance suck? Especially on the iPhone? I worry that the thumbnails alone might be a few hundred GB?

Ideally I just want to
1) simplify my photo management
2) have an offsite backup of the photos in the cloud
3) have a local complete copy on my external SSD
4) be able to access any of those photos from my iPhone/iPad on the move

Is this do-able using icloud or should I be looking elsewhere?

Any thoughts or feedback welcome!

 

[dk001]

Mine is less than 10% of yours in size. I keep it on a wifi SSD that allows me to easily dump / access photos while keeping minimal on my PM and IPP. I also have a dongle with mSD cards to physically transfer. So I end up with an SSD and mSD copy.
As to a cloud setup, I have not found a great setup but do use Google Drive and shared folders to share photos and for easy use when not at home.

On device as needed 12 ProMax and IPP 11
Wifi SSD for a complete copy
mSD for what I want on hand or working on (sort, filter, process, etc...) and a second backup
Cloud for sharing and ease of access while out and about.

Now for something your size ... I could see something similar working however that depends on what you want on hand. I have found having a lot of photos on the device can raise issues especially when updating / upgrading the OS. I tend to keep the on device to under 1k or less.

Best of luck!

 

[am2am]

My photos library is ~1,3TB - most RAWs (60k) - all stored in iCloud - no performance problems.
You have short delay with optimised library when you browse your photos (before it loads full preview) but it's library size independent - you have the same with small library as well.
Depending on how much free memory you have on your device your optimised library will have more local previews (I use iPad with 256GB for photos browsing) - unfortunately you cannot control your local preview storage size.
I have my entire library locally on MBP16 (no optimise option - local originals for all) and it works like a charm - no delay at all and really fast edits. It cost you storage of course but worth it in my opinion.
I keep another library with all originals locally on Mac mini server as a backup.

 

[AL2TEACH]

I may be barking up the wrong tree but have you looked into NAS?

 

[Mike Boreham]

My photos library is ~1,3GB - most RAWs (60k) - all stored in iCloud - no performance problems.
You have short delay with optimised library when you browse your photos (before it loads full preview) but it's library size independent - you have the same with small library as well.
Depending on how much free memory you have on your device your optimised library will have more local previews (I use iPad with 256GB for photos browsing) - unfortunately you cannot control your local preview storage size.
I have my entire library locally on MBP16 (no optimise option - local originals for all) and it works like a charm - no delay at all and really fast edits. It cost you storage of course but worth it in my opinion.
I keep another library with all originals locally on Mac mini server as a backup.

Can I confirm that "~1,3GB" in your post above is a typo for "1,3 TB" ?

 

[am2am]

Yep - it was 1,3TB (now it's little more )
Thanks for catching it - I will correct my original post