I have a iCloud Photos library that I've been building for 25-ish years. It has 155,000+ photos and 5,943 videos totaling 2.3 TB of space.
I've long been worried about the possibility of data loss, so, for the purposes of backup, and perhaps being a little overkill, I bought a Mac mini and two WD My Passport 5 TB drives, one to host the System Photos Library (Download Originals to this Mac) and the other to serve as a Time Machine Backup. I don't love having to go to these lengths to have a backup, but it is what it is. I bit the bullet.
That was one month ago. I have not yet been able to get a working photos library on the external drive. It is formatted as APFS. I have tried a few things:
Each version involves weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks of waiting. Nothing ever seems to progress. There are various failure points, various failure modes. It just is a constant issue. "Repair" processes stall for days, no progress, the progress bar stays in the same position day after day after day. The console shows repetitive things about photos but nothing that jumps out.
I'm curious, I've seen posts say that a magnetic, non-SSD hard drive is a nightmare for hosting your library. But, I am curious about a very, very important distinction: I am not actively using the library to view, edit, process, any photos. It's meant to merely sit there, dumbly and untouched, waiting for iCloud syncing. I'm literally not interacting with the library at all. It's just a file storage -- because this is the only way MacOS allows you to have a backup of iCloud Photos. Performance of the drive is not critical when it comes to interaction. When I interact with the library, it's on other devices like a MacBook/iPhone/iPad that have optimized the library. Again: the Mac mini is a dumb, headless machine just sitting there doing meant to do nothing but host the library.
Given that I am not interacting with the library in any way, is it possible that a non-SSD hard drive is still just simply totally and fully incapable of handling this task? The cost of buying a 5 TB SSD -- given that I am using it for literally nothing but hosting a library that I never even interact with -- seems absurd and a non-solution. I'm just not sure what to do, here, because this is just getting ridiculous.
I'm curious if others have had any issues or can share similar stories.
I've long been worried about the possibility of data loss, so, for the purposes of backup, and perhaps being a little overkill, I bought a Mac mini and two WD My Passport 5 TB drives, one to host the System Photos Library (Download Originals to this Mac) and the other to serve as a Time Machine Backup. I don't love having to go to these lengths to have a backup, but it is what it is. I bit the bullet.
That was one month ago. I have not yet been able to get a working photos library on the external drive. It is formatted as APFS. I have tried a few things:
- Start Photos with system photo library in my Mac Mini's user folder, set to "Optimize Mac Storage," let things catch up, and then, once stable, move the library to a freshly wiped APFS external drive as outlined in this article.
- The same as step one, but with the external drive formatted as APFS Encrypted.
- Creating a new photo library on the external drive, setting it as the system library, turning on iCloud Photos and letting it process
- The same as step three, but with the external drive formatted as APFS Encrypted.
Each version involves weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks of waiting. Nothing ever seems to progress. There are various failure points, various failure modes. It just is a constant issue. "Repair" processes stall for days, no progress, the progress bar stays in the same position day after day after day. The console shows repetitive things about photos but nothing that jumps out.
I'm curious, I've seen posts say that a magnetic, non-SSD hard drive is a nightmare for hosting your library. But, I am curious about a very, very important distinction: I am not actively using the library to view, edit, process, any photos. It's meant to merely sit there, dumbly and untouched, waiting for iCloud syncing. I'm literally not interacting with the library at all. It's just a file storage -- because this is the only way MacOS allows you to have a backup of iCloud Photos. Performance of the drive is not critical when it comes to interaction. When I interact with the library, it's on other devices like a MacBook/iPhone/iPad that have optimized the library. Again: the Mac mini is a dumb, headless machine just sitting there doing meant to do nothing but host the library.
Given that I am not interacting with the library in any way, is it possible that a non-SSD hard drive is still just simply totally and fully incapable of handling this task? The cost of buying a 5 TB SSD -- given that I am using it for literally nothing but hosting a library that I never even interact with -- seems absurd and a non-solution. I'm just not sure what to do, here, because this is just getting ridiculous.
I'm curious if others have had any issues or can share similar stories.
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