I finally threw in the towel and paid Apple an additional $10/mo. for photo sync. There will be 4 of us sharing the space, but right now it’s not shared until I can get my photos synced. I’m quite sure that I don’t know what I’m doing, but I did go ahead and select iCloud Photos in the settings, with download originals to this mac selected as well. My storage system since forever has been to regularly connect the phone to the mac, download all the new pics, and delete off the phone, so all the pics are on the mac already anyway.
However, during the sync process, I got a notification from Clean My Mac saying that the external 1 TB drive that I use exclusively for Photos, is running out of space. Previous to this attempted sync, my Photos library was just over 400GB. I’m watching the space used on this disk continue climbing to now 803 GB. What in the world is going on? There certainly wasn’t any additional amount of photos on any of my devices, much less an additional 400 GB. The funny thing is that the Photos library file/package/whatever you call it remains unchanged at it’s previous size, and there are no new files visible on the drive.
Should I be panicking here? (And yes I do have backups)
FWIW, I checked the Photos drive for hidden files and found a smattering of empty folders and small files. Nothing that would indicate another 400 GB.
Maybe the file/image names/conventions of what is being currently downloaded from Apple Photos to your drive is different than what you currently use on your external drive? Meaning, you may be downloading and storing duplicates of what you already have on your drive, instead of overwriting photos you already have.
Like you (it seems), I am obsessive about making sure I have a ‘local’/master copy of all my actual Photo files and that they are backed up (for me, on a Synology NAS). As rock solid as iCloud is, I want my ‘master’ set of Photos on my own discs. I don’t want them ‘stuck’ on Apple or Google servers. The Photos are too valuable to me and my family.
Also, here is a post I shared in this forum from about ~4 years ago where I outlined Photo mgmt processes I use. Not sure it is a match to what you are trying to do but always good to see how others handle Photo management. Since I posted this, I have stopped uploading photos to Google Photos since they too now charge for storage. Happy to continue discussion and chat ‘offline’ if you want.
I agree re: “possession” of digital resources, especially personal photos/videos. I do a fair amount of backing up. One day I’ll have a NAS of some sort, but I’ve been fairly well served up til now with my ragtag JBOD backups, OneDrive, and Backblaze. My goal, misguided as it may be, was to be able to access all photos at all times on all devices (assuming internet access, of course). I do not want to give up possession of the photo files, but would still like to access them from my phone or ipad, especially now that I’m pursuing a side hustle that greatly benefits from unlimited access to large photo libraries.
I had no icloud photo storage before I started yesterday, so there was nothing to download. My entire library resided on an external drive attached to my MBP (plus backups of course). I purchased the 2TB subscription, and made sure all the appropriate icloud settings were selected. Until I went to bed after midnight, nothing had apparently changed other than the used storage on my Photos disk went up to ~900 GB, while a close monitoring of the library itself showed no duplicates. There was also no additional photos library or hidden files of any kind that I could find on the otherwise unoccupied drive.
HOWEVER - when I checked about 4 hours ago, the dedicated Photos drive reports an available space of 263GB, and checking a few minutes ago shows an available space of 324GB. So as Buffalo Springfield might say… there’s somethin’ happenin’ here; what it is ain’t exactly clear. It seems though that it is a kind of countdown for all the uploads. A check of my iphone now shows a total of 11,323 photos available. I’m assuming that’s proportional to the amount of space that has “opened up” on my Photos external drive.
Yes, unless we can find some documentation at Apple Developer (and who does that?), we are often forced to just ride along with whatever process that Apple throws at us and hope for the best. After a period of confusion where we wonder what the heck is happening, it sometimes “just works.”
