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gooutside

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 16, 2009
12
3
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:
  1. 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.
  2. The same as step one, but with the external drive formatted as APFS Encrypted.
  3. Creating a new photo library on the external drive, setting it as the system library, turning on iCloud Photos and letting it process
  4. The same as step three, but with the external drive formatted as APFS Encrypted.
In none of these have I even got to a point where I could switch to "Download Originals to this Mac" because we get caught in crashes and endless hangs of processing the library, things like, "Restoring iCloud Library" and whatnot.

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.
 
Last edited:

gooutside

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 16, 2009
12
3
It may also be worth noting that my Mac mini does not have a big enough internal HD to host the full library and then drag it to the external. That would involve buying a new, eye-watering $2,500 Mac mini setup, which is also absurd and not a solution.

Really, I'm wondering if others have run into just baseline incompatibility with hosting a library on a standard magnetic external drive. Like -- is it just simply, flatly not feasible. If so -- it seems like that'd be good to communicate to people?
 

rajs

macrumors regular
Jan 21, 2004
104
54
... wondering if others have run into just baseline incompatibility with hosting a library on a standard magnetic external drive. Like -- is it just simply, flatly not feasible ...
You can use an external spinning disk drive connected via USB. I've done it with a 14 TB 5400RPM external drive with a library size with similiar # of items with a size of ~ 1.7TB of disk space on APFS encrypted. Not fast. Very slow but it all worked.

Back in 2022, I switched the "full size originals" photos library over to a 2 TB Western Digital Blue internal SATA SSD slotted into an Inateck SATA to USB 3 Dock and connected that to my Mac.

Something similiar with newer version of items would probably serve you well. i.e. 4TB external SSD for your originals full size library. Upcoming Prime Day (Oct 2024) you'll be able to find a 4 TB SSD for ~ 200 USD potentially. An enclosure / dock for ~ 30 USD. The most important factors are a trouble free reliable connection to the Mac and it being cost effective. Basically a decent SSD brand, an external SSD enclosure to USB 3 connection (There are MANY heat related issues with a lot of the NVMe type SSD blades being put into a small NVMe to USB 3 / Thunderbolt enclosures. Recommend you consider solutions that optimize for the SSD running cool and thus not having any issues long term. Need to make sure the enclosure / dock and it's chipset are reliable and won't get super hot. Back in 2022 I opted to just go with a cheap SATA to USB3 dock to hold a Western Digital SATA SSD. Fast enough for my purposes. Hasn't given a single issue on my mac that essentially runs 24x7 (except for operating system update / upgrade reboots).

While my particular implementation and backup plan is different compared to yours I think the details in the following two posts could be helpful re: configuration of FULL Originals Library on an external drive and the benefits of APFS for storing multiple versions of the same file without using additional disk space.

Backup Solution: iCloud Full Photo Library on External Drive whilst optimized (reduced) version on Internal Drive:

Backup Strategy: Optimized iCloud Photo Library on Mac and full one on external ssd:
 

mattspace

macrumors 68040
Jun 5, 2013
3,307
2,952
Australia
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.

What is it about using iCloud photo library you need specifically? You have decades of photos, but the iCloud sync function for photos is only a few years old.

Is it so you can shoot a photo on your phone, and have it just turn up in the library without you having to do any importing etc?
 
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