My family has been on iOS devices for years but our PC is still a Windows machine. We are getting ready to ditch that old machine and go with a Mac, to get everything in the same ecosystem. We have about 400 GB of old photos and videos on the Windows machine that I want to import into iCloud Photo Library. I want all of our digital photos and videos in one place, accessible from all devices, and backed up in the cloud. I've been tracking the evolution of iCloud, MacOS, and iOS over the years and it *seems* like the systems have matured enough to do this now. Of course, I have a hard drive based backup of all our stuff just in case.
I have some questions regarding this:
I have some questions regarding this:
- Is iCloud reliable enough for this now? Have people had recent success doing this, and any concerns or words of advice?
- Our family accounts are linked in iCloud, but I'm assuming I have to pick one account (mine), upgrade it to a large plan, and import all the old photos/videos into that account. I'm assuming other family members can see them by having their own accounts on our Mac, but it won't be possible for them to view these photos from their iOS devices unless I share them out from my account (and I probably wouldn't want to share them *all* out as it would get too unwieldy). Is this right?
- How will old photos appear in "Moments"? I'm assuming iCloud will pick up the "Date Modified" field but there will be no location unless I go in and specify manually. What if it's a scanned photo? Can I manually modify the photo date and have iCloud pick that change up?
- To keep the data transfer manageable and avoid errors, I'm planning to import to iCloud in batches. I'll move photos into the synced folder in groups of maybe 1000 images, then let it sync and wait a week or so. Sound like a good idea?