Photos library upload to iCloud: is it stuck or just really slow?

[Argelius]

I am in the midst of uploading a very large Photos library to iCloud and am trying to determine how far along is is progressing or if it is stuck.

in Photos, I can go to Preferences=>iCloud where it says, "now uploading xx,xxx files...". However this number isn't changing and I stated the upload process a couple of days ago. (I knew from the outset, with ~50,000 photos, the process would take some time).

I've tried pressing "pause for a day" then pressing "re-enable" to see if that might jump start the process but it seems to remain at the same xx,xxx files number.

My Photos library is on an external portable USB drive, so I'm also wondering if the speed of that drive is causing the process to grind to a halt.

Was wondering if I might move the photo library back to the SSD of my MBP and start the process over? (And if I do this, will that cause gazillions of duplicates and other shenanigans in iCloud?

Thanks for your help!

 

[gsmornot]

I am in the midst of uploading a very large Photos library to iCloud and am trying to determine how far along is is progressing or if it is stuck.

in Photos, I can go to Preferences=>iCloud where it says, "now uploading xx,xxx files...". However this number isn't changing and I stated the upload process a couple of days ago. (I knew from the outset, with ~50,000 photos, the process would take some time).

I've tried pressing "pause for a day" then pressing "re-enable" to see if that might jump start the process but it seems to remain at the same xx,xxx files number.

My Photos library is on an external portable USB drive, so I'm also wondering if the speed of that drive is causing the process to grind to a halt.

Was wondering if I might move the photo library back to the SSD of my MBP and start the process over? (And if I do this, will that cause gazillions of duplicates and other shenanigans in iCloud?

Thanks for your help!

Well, generally yes, iCloud Photos is slow when you're doing a bulk upload. Its great for a small group taken on a device but slow generally when uploading a full collection. (my experience) Uploaded from an iPhone roughly 3k photos not long ago and that took about 5 hours to fully complete. I'm not sure if its meant this way due to management so that the system can manage the process for everyone or what but it eventually gets there.

I would not start over but if you do you should feel better knowing it has the ability to detect duplicates. My testing has shown it to work well as long as your file name matches.

 

[IndyBob]

Keep in mind that most cable companies upload speed is a lot less then your download speed. If you have videos they are going to take longer too. I would just wait it out.

 

[bigdaddylawman]

I am in the midst of uploading a very large Photos library to iCloud and am trying to determine how far along is is progressing or if it is stuck.

in Photos, I can go to Preferences=>iCloud where it says, "now uploading xx,xxx files...". However this number isn't changing and I stated the upload process a couple of days ago. (I knew from the outset, with ~50,000 photos, the process would take some time).

I've tried pressing "pause for a day" then pressing "re-enable" to see if that might jump start the process but it seems to remain at the same xx,xxx files number.

My Photos library is on an external portable USB drive, so I'm also wondering if the speed of that drive is causing the process to grind to a halt.

Was wondering if I might move the photo library back to the SSD of my MBP and start the process over? (And if I do this, will that cause gazillions of duplicates and other shenanigans in iCloud?

Thanks for your help!

I'm in the same situation. I have fibre broadband with 5Mbps upload. The issue is clearly at Apple's end of the network and this situation has been around for many months. I'm paying good money for 1TB of space. I have almost 200GB of photos to upload and in 24 hours haven't managed 100th of that. In fact at the moment I think it has stalled completely. This is a stain on Apple's reputation for quality of service. If it continues I will cancel my iCloud subscription and go to Google instead and simply archive my photos there.

 

[gsmornot]

I'm in the same situation. I have fibre broadband with 5Mbps upload. The issue is clearly at Apple's end of the network and this situation has been around for many months. I'm paying good money for 1TB of space. I have almost 200GB of photos to upload and in 24 hours haven't managed 100th of that. In fact at the moment I think it has stalled completely. This is a stain on Apple's reputation for quality of service. If it continues I will cancel my iCloud subscription and go to Google instead and simply archive my photos there.

I just uploaded a 60GB collection from my Macbook that took about 5 days of babysitting but did finally complete. Your battery should be full and you should leave the photos app open. I tried changing energy settings to keep it on all the time but that did not help. It took me little the spacebar every so often to wake it up and keep it alive. When I had a moment I would wake it up and let it run a while.

 

[ElSpectre]

I'm in the same situation. I have fibre broadband with 5Mbps upload. The issue is clearly at Apple's end of the network and this situation has been around for many months. I'm paying good money for 1TB of space. I have almost 200GB of photos to upload and in 24 hours haven't managed 100th of that. In fact at the moment I think it has stalled completely. This is a stain on Apple's reputation for quality of service. If it continues I will cancel my iCloud subscription and go to Google instead and simply archive my photos there.

How did that turn out? Did anyone ever find a magic setting that fixes this stalling of the upload?

 

[JohnDS]

@bigdaddylawman:

Don't forget your upload speed is in bits, not bytes. 1 Byte = 8 bits. 200 GigaBytes = 1,600 Gigabits = 1,600,000 Megabits.

At 5 megaBits per second, 1,600,000 Megabits will take 320,000 seconds, or 88 hours to upload.

And this presumes you are getting a constant 5 Mbs up (which is not likely) and have no other overhead and are not using your internet connection for anything else.

Also, some ISP's start throttling your connection if there is a constant high load.

Have a look at: http://www.howtogeek.com/200728/why-does-it-take-so-long-to-upload-data-to-the-cloud/

 

[campbellum]

Has anybody really answered this??? I turned on iCloud Photo Library about four days ago and NOT ONE photo has moved.

What is going on???

 

[JohnDS]

Have a look at this link: http://www.macworld.co.uk/how-to/mac-software/how-to-icloud-photo-sharing-photo-library-3619188/

Can you post a screen shot of your prefs pane that corresponds to the one at page 8 of the link above?

 

[campbellum]

Have a look at this link: http://www.macworld.co.uk/how-to/mac-software/how-to-icloud-photo-sharing-photo-library-3619188/

Can you post a screen shot of your prefs pane that corresponds to the one at page 8 of the link above?

Thanks for trying to help. The problem was not on my Mac. It was on my iPhone. However, after applying a few hints I found here and there, the process seems to have jumpstarted. It's sill going slowly, but at least it's going. So, I'm okay for now.

 

[KirstenD567]

Thanks for trying to help. The problem was not on my Mac. It was on my iPhone. However, after applying a few hints I found here and there, the process seems to have jumpstarted. It's sill going slowly, but at least it's going. So, I'm okay for now.

Can I ask what did work please? I'm having the exact same problem now.

Thanks

 

[campbellum]

Can I ask what did work please? I'm having the exact same problem now.

Thanks

[doublepost=1492269897][/doublepost]I'm sorry, but I don't remember exactly what I did. I just followed the few hints in this thread and mainly waited longer. It finally took effect. It may take several days. Wait, and keep the app open.

 

[Stefan johansson]

Cloud storage is usually slow and sometimes it freak out when transferring large files,for photo storage,I prefer an external disk. The best solution,however,is a home server with hard drives,connected to the Internet,because then,you can access all your stored data from wherever you are.

 

[hackeron]

For me this process took several days and it was a big mistake - I copied a 51k photo and 1k video library to iCloud and all my iOS devices have crawled to a halt. Not just when wanting to send a photo, just getting the photos list open can take 20 seconds, but everything is incredibly unresponsive. I am now in the process of splitting my library up into multiple libraries. I think it's a bad idea to have any more than maybe 10k items on an iOS device at any one point (this is with optimise storage switched on).

 

[KitKat7b]

For me this process took several days and it was a big mistake - I copied a 51k photo and 1k video library to iCloud and all my iOS devices have crawled to a halt. Not just when wanting to send a photo, just getting the photos list open can take 20 seconds, but everything is incredibly unresponsive. I am now in the process of splitting my library up into multiple libraries. I think it's a bad idea to have any more than maybe 10k items on an iOS device at any one point (this is with optimise storage switched on).

I’m having the same issue: just opening the camera and taking a picture takes 15-20 seconds (iPhone 6S). Frankly, performance across the board is the same. Creating a note, opening address book, etc, all take 15-20 seconds just to start. I feel like some doddering old fool “wait a minute while my device opens up…” So obviously something is seriously wrong. My battery performance has cratered as well. Before i go through the hassle of resetting the phone, could it be the size of my photos library? I have 144,000 photos. I’ve been assuming that’s the problem.

If it is the size of the IPL what are my options? Thanks

 

[WhatInOblivion21]

[doublepost=1514492737][/doublepost]

@bigdaddylawman:

Don't forget your upload speed is in bits, not bytes. 1 Byte = 8 bits. 200 GigaBytes = 1,600 Gigabits = 1,600,000 Megabits.

At 5 megaBits per second, 1,600,000 Megabits will take 320,000 seconds, or 88 hours to upload.

And this presumes you are getting a constant 5 Mbs up (which is not likely) and have no other overhead and are not using your internet connection for anything else.

Also, some ISP's start throttling your connection if there is a constant high load.

Have a look at: http://www.howtogeek.com/200728/why-does-it-take-so-long-to-upload-data-to-the-cloud/

Bits refers to speed, bytes refer to storage...

 

[BigMcGuire]

Edit: oops - thought this was iPhone forum.

I did this with my wife's iPhone. We're on Frontier (Formerly Verizon) FIOS with 98 mbps UP and DOWN. On good days 15mb/sec from OneDrive or Blizzard is doable.

Flipped on iCloud Photo backup for my wife's 10,000 + photos. Took 5 DAYS .... dozens of reboots, and mostly just watching the phone sit there and do nothing. Remember, the phone has to be PLUGGED IN and on Wifi for it to back up to iCloud. It's really easy to hit the "wait till later" option too when you're trying to figure out why it isn't going - and there is no way to undo that.

Meanwhile, it took less than 40 mins? to upload to OneDrive and Google Photos.

I recommend extreme patience, tons of sitting on a charger plugged in on WiFi with the screen on. Took my wife 5 DAYS+. Wasn't worth it.

iCloud Photos gets really laggy it seems when you put anything north of 15k photos on it - as other members here have demonstrated.


I've got 98,000 photos in Google Photos - all easily accessible, easily searchable, taking 0 space on my iPhone and the app only uses 400mb in cache.

 

[Leer]

[doublepost=1514492737][/doublepost]

Bits refers to speed, bytes refer to storage...

[doublepost=1514785793][/doublepost]Ummm... this is 100% incorrect.

1 bit is the lowest storage on a computer, a single "yes" or "No", or is usually referred to as "1" or "0". These are stored in groups of 8 which is the smallest physical storage space. 8 bits = 1 byte. that gives a range between 0 and 255.

8 bits = 1 byte
1024 bytes = 1 kilobyte (not 1000)
1024 kilobytes = 1 megabyte (again, not 1000)
1024 Megabytes = 1 gigabyte... etc etc.

Bits and Bytes are both STORAGE. Bits per second (bps) and Bytes per second (Bps) are rates as its basically quantity over a period of time.

when you calculate the quantity required to move over a slow connection, the amount of bytes is more than you ex[pect if you have multiplied figures by only 1,000. Also, communications carry a whole swag of overhead data (start and stop bits, error checking codes etc) that also adds to the transfer. Not to mention that errors (and there are ALWAYS errors) must be re-sent. You may send a 100MB file, but the resulting data transfer may be closer to 150MB or more, which makes the whole process alot slower than you would expect.

Mostly useless info, but if you ever wonder why the maths of how long something takes, or juast how much data you chewed through during a download simply doesnt add up, then this perhaps helps explain why.

 

[milescortez]

Edit: oops - thought this was iPhone forum.

I did this with my wife's iPhone. We're on Frontier (Formerly Verizon) FIOS with 98 mbps UP and DOWN. On good days 15mb/sec from OneDrive or Blizzard is doable.

Flipped on iCloud Photo backup for my wife's 10,000 + photos. Took 5 DAYS .... dozens of reboots, and mostly just watching the phone sit there and do nothing. Remember, the phone has to be PLUGGED IN and on Wifi for it to back up to iCloud. It's really easy to hit the "wait till later" option too when you're trying to figure out why it isn't going - and there is no way to undo that.

Meanwhile, it took less than 40 mins? to upload to OneDrive and Google Photos.

I recommend extreme patience, tons of sitting on a charger plugged in on WiFi with the screen on. Took my wife 5 DAYS+. Wasn't worth it.

iCloud Photos gets really laggy it seems when you put anything north of 15k photos on it - as other members here have demonstrated.


I've got 98,000 photos in Google Photos - all easily accessible, easily searchable, taking 0 space on my iPhone and the app only uses 400mb in cache.

[doublepost=1532021711][/doublepost]My issue is somewhat different. I have (in round numbers) a 300GB file with about 40,000 photos. My ISP says I've chewed through about 300GB of additional data in the last 36-48 hours but the Photos library is saying I'm only about 33% through the upload. It doesn't match up at all. So I download bandwidth+ to monitor my data. Sure enough the data upload amount quickly bumped up about 10GB but the # of photos barely changed. Maybe it the remaining # of photos decreased but 10 photos. It makes ZERO sense. Any one have any ideas? I have gigabit ethernet with Xfinity and get speeds of about 900 down and 50 up.

 

[Rastafabi]

In case someone finds this in the future: I wrote a little tool which should prioritise the photo upload (among other things).

It works by executing sudo renice -20 for the desired command(s).

Tool's icon source as of the posts date: https://image.flaticon.com/icons/png/512/477/477439.png

27-9: Small fix regarding Time Machine

 

[MjWoNeR]

In case someone finds this in the future: I wrote a little tool which should prioritise the photo upload (among other things).

It works by executing sudo renice -20 for the desired command(s).
View attachment 958793
Tool's icon source as of the posts date: https://image.flaticon.com/icons/png/512/477/477439.png

27-9: Small fix regarding Time Machine

Thanks for that! I had to re-sync icloud photos and this helps!