Friendly Reminder to ALL Regarding Photos and Space

[AbSoluTc]

I am in IT and we learned that a large majority of our users have duplicate photo libraries. This is the result of Photos App converting the iPhoto library but not removing the old library. So any on with a large library, will have twice the space taken up.

Make sure you check your Pictures folder for an older iPhoto library and delete it if you have converted. If you already knew about this, excellent!

 

[BarracksSi]

Holy crap, there's 150GB I'd like to get back.

For the Kind property, it says, "Migrated Photo Library". I'll copy it as-is to an external just because I have the option -- but if I wanted to simply get rid of it, is that fine?

 

[alFR]

I am in IT and we learned that a large majority of our users have duplicate photo libraries. This is the result of Photos App converting the iPhoto library but not removing the old library. So any on with a large library, will have twice the space taken up.

That isn't how it does it: when it converts the library, the old iPhoto library becomes a set of symlinks to the new one, there's only 1 actual copy of the files. That said, if you want to delete the old library it won't do any harm.

 

[BarracksSi]

That isn't how it does it: when it converts the library, the old iPhoto library becomes a set of symlinks to the new one, there's only 1 actual copy of the files. That said, if you want to delete the old library it won't do any harm.

I just did Open Package Contents of both my old iPhoto library and the new Photos library, and both of them appear to contain duplicate image files in their respective Masters folders. Same filenames, same Date Modified, etc.

I think I'm proving to myself that I can safely trash the old library.

 

[Phil A.]

The "files" in the old photo library are actually hard links to the real files in the new one. You aren't using twice the space and won't get anything significant back by deleting it.

This "issue" has been raised and clarified numerous times on here and elsewhere

 

[AbSoluTc]

The "files" in the old photo library are actually hard links to the real files in the new one. You aren't using twice the space and won't get anything significant back by deleting it.

This "issue" has been raised and clarified numerous times on here and elsewhere

Incorrect.

We have seen this issue many times. Duplicate photo libraries, one before and one after. Once you delete the old one, space available on the HD increases. I had this happen on my own machine last night. I ran the sys. info and went to manage my drive to see what the features were. I noticed quite a bit in pictures. Saw I had two libraries, HD showing 235GB used and deleted my old iPhoto library and my drive is now showing 180GB used.

So either there is a huge bug, or both libraries still exist. I am going with the later. I understand and have read what Apple has stated about the migration process but it's not true. Not in our experience. We also were unable to migrate a photo library if there was not enough free HD space either.

 

[BarracksSi]

I'm okay with retaining the old library in case the migration fails. It'd be nice to know that it's still there and that it's safe to delete, though.