iCloud I'd like to move my 55,000 family photos and 380 videos to my external Samsung T7 and also use that as my PHOTOS LIBRARY...Is this possible?

[bassett72]

I bought a M2 Mac Mini, 16GB/256GB. Have 55K photos and 380 video on iCloud. I'd like to 1, use my 2 TB Samsung T7 as my primary home for PHOTOS LIBRARY. And 2, get all my original photos in there. Going forward, what I'd like to/need to do is have any photos I put into "PHOTOS" be stored on the external drive and have it backed up with iCloud. How the heck do I this?

 

[FreakinEurekan]

First - be sure the external is formatted APFS

Launch Photos while holding Option - select create new library, put it on the external. It will be empty.

Photos Settings, enable that library as the “System Library” and to “Download and keep originals”

Go away for however many days it takes to download all that 😉

 

[Bigwaff]

The external will always need to be attached if iCloud is involved.

Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support

To save storage space on your Mac, you can move your Photos library to a different storage device.

support.apple.com

 

[bassett72]

So, based on these 2 screen shots, I should have done this, correct?

How do I know the originals are on the external drive? It didn't seem to download anything. If it did, it was instantaneous..

 

[bassett72]

HA, never mind. I think it is churning...

But do my settings look correct?

And why does it say it is only downloading 3,229 of the 54,328? Just doing it in chunks?

 

[FreakinEurekan]

Looking good!

And why does it say it is only downloading 3,229 of the 54,328?

See the last step in my instructions above 😉

 

[bassett72]

Looking good!

See the last step in my instructions above 😉

So, after 6 hours, this is the change....

This can't be working properly, can it? At this rate, I'll be dead before it finishes...

 

[Bigwaff]

There could be any number of reasons why syncing data to iCloud could pause or take a very long time.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/101559

 

[FreakinEurekan]

That looks absolutely normal to me. “Days” was not a euphemism.

 

[MacProFCP]

I bought a M2 Mac Mini, 16GB/256GB. Have 55K photos and 380 video on iCloud. I'd like to 1, use my 2 TB Samsung T7 as my primary home for PHOTOS LIBRARY. And 2, get all my original photos in there. Going forward, what I'd like to/need to do is have any photos I put into "PHOTOS" be stored on the external drive and have it backed up with iCloud. How the heck do I this?

I have this set up.

Just love your library to the external drive with Photos closed. Once copied over, open the external drive library and then go to settings to make that the default library. You can then delete the one stored on your internal.

 

[FreakinEurekan]

I have this set up.

Just love your library to the external drive with Photos closed. Once copied over, open the external drive library and then go to settings to make that the default library. You can then delete the one stored on your internal.

His goal is to have the external house “originals” which are on iCloud but not on the internal drive. There’s little benefit to moving the internal library. Once the new external is completely synced, the internal can be deleted to recover the space used.

 

[MacProFCP]

His goal is to have the external house “originals” which are on iCloud but not on the internal drive. There’s little benefit to moving the internal library. Once the new external is completely synced, the internal can be deleted to recover the space used.

With that much data, the thumbnails are prob a good few gig but I see your point.