My Photos.app has three libraries?

[bluedoggiant]

Hey everyone,
Turning to MR for help here as I am at a loss as what to do with this situation.

This resulted from the iPhoto to Photos update last year.

As can be seen in the screenshot, I have three libraries, all about the same size according to Finder (but not the same according to Daisy Disk). My Photos.app claims Photos Library 2 is my library, but I do not understand why I still have an iPhoto library, and a normal Photos Library, also do not know why there is a Photos Library 2 to begin with. I didn't have issues updating to Photos.app or updated twice or anything like that.

Trying to save some space on my HD, anyone with this setup who upgraded from iPhoto know which directories I can safely delete? Do not want to corrupt anything...

Thanks all!

 

[Weaselboy]

Looking at the dates and times there, it appears to converted your iPhoto Library to a Photos library at 11:46PM on April 8. That left you the Photos Library and the old iPhotos Library as it should.

It looks like nine minutes later that same evening you imported the iPhoto library a second time, sounds like accidentally. Then it looks like you have been using Photos Library 2 for photo storage since then.

First I would backup all three libraries somewhere just to be safe. Then you can delete the Photos Library and rename Photos Library 2 to Photos library. Make sure Photos is not running when you do this. Then hold the option key as you launch Photos. You will get a window asking what library you want to use. Point it to the renamed Photos Library and you should be all set.

If you want to delete the old iPhoto library, you can... but is not using double the disk space like it appears. It used what are called "hard links" to point to the same (old) files so the same space is used for both libraries. Good article about it here.

 

[bluedoggiant]

Looking at the dates and times there, it appears to converted your iPhoto Library to a Photos library at 11:46PM on April 8. That left you the Photos Library and the old iPhotos Library as it should.

It looks like nine minutes later that same evening you imported the iPhoto library a second time, sounds like accidentally. Then it looks like you have been using Photos Library 2 for photo storage since then.

First I would backup all three libraries somewhere just to be safe. Then you can delete the Photos Library and rename Photos Library 2 to Photos library. Make sure Photos is not running when you do this. Then hold the option key as you launch Photos. You will get a window asking what library you want to use. Point it to the renamed Photos Library and you should be all set.

If you want to delete the old iPhoto library, you can... but is not using double the disk space like it appears. It used what are called "hard links" to point to the same (old) files so the same space is used for both libraries. Good article about it here.

Great advice, and thank you for the link. I knew it had something to do with something similar in concept to aliases. Always keep my computer backed up. I know the modified dates on the other two are from a year ago but I was unsure if Photos.app was somehow still accessing them, but I will go ahead and delete them to free up some valuable space.

Thank you!

 

[bluedoggiant]

Strange enough: After deleting the two extraneous libraries, my computer showed I had went from 116GB free to 177GB free. After a time machine backup (to remove .MobileBackups on computer HD), and restarting the computer, it showed that I had 79GB free, before slowly creeping up to 136GB free.

And Photos library working fine.