Clone iCloud Photo Library drive—will it re-“upload”?

[Mistercharlie]

I keep my Photos library on an external 1TB SSD connected to my M1 Mac mini. I will be replacing it with a 2TB SSD.

I plan to clone the entire drive with Carbon Copy Cloner. Will the Mac just think that it’s still the old SSD, and just work? Or will I have to tell the Photos app that this is the “new” system library?

What I want to avoid is when Photos re-uploads everything, which takes days (even though I think it’s just analyzing and comparing the library, not actually uploading all the photos). If I clone the disk, can I avoid this? Or is it better to move the Photos library by good old drag-and-drop?

 

[Mistercharlie]

I guess I’ll just have to test it out.

 

[Mistercharlie]

The answer is no! It doesn't reindex everything.

I cloned the drive with CCC, and renamed the clone to match the original.

Then I shut down the Mac, unplugged the old drive, and restarted. The Mc didn't even blink. It treats the new drive as if nothing had changed. Still have to test Lightroom, Logic and others, but it's looking good.