Managing large photos library

[Benjamin Phillips]

Hello all,

Looking for some advice on managing large photos libraries.

Over the last 13+ years my photos library has slowly grown and now contains 86000 photos and 6500 videos. Of course over time the photos on my cameras have increased in megapixel count and since updating my GoPro there are more and more 4k resolution videos. My library now sits at 1.23TB and is starting to feel inefficient. On the occasions where it needs to update the library because the photos app has been updated or if the file is perceived to be corrupted and needs to be restored this process can take a few days and nights.

The photos library is sitting on an external mechanical drive (internal drive not big enough) and the library is populated with a range of metadata including photo locations, facial recognition fully utilised and all photos organised into albums based on the event or celebration. It's this added metadata held by photos which I value as much as the photos and videos themselves. I do not use iCloud photo syncing.

I enjoy the convenience of all photos being in the one location. However, I am wondering if I should split the library into smaller versions. Perhaps one library for pre-2010, another for 2010-2020 and then a new library for the photos I have taken this year and in the future. I would hope this would make the library quicker to load and fix if things go wrong but in doing so is there functionality I am going to miss or downsides that should be a serious consideration.

Any views from fellow Mac users on how to manage large photos libraries would be greatly appreciated.

Ben.

[Sam - MacAmbulance]

What’s the size of the library? You can get 2TB SSDs these days relatively cheaply, will make loading the library much quicker.

_

Regards Sam Mullen +44 (0)7747778022 in...@macambulance.com www.macambulance.com MacAmbulance Ltd. Providing Affordable Mac/PC Support and Web Development

MacAmbulance Ltd. is a registered company in England & Wales, registration number 8466597 This email is intended solely for the addressed recipients and may contain privileged or confidential information. If you have received this email in error please notify the sender and delete the email immediately.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Sussex Mac User Group" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to smug+uns...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/smug/b35efda2-1094-403d-8167-67987d0d42d7%40googlegroups.com.

[Jason P. Davies]

I spent a very long time going through a library the tenth of that size and reduced it by 10% - in other words not worth the bother. You definitely need a back up of that drive though!

I’d split it - start again one day. You can load different libraries (not simultaneously though).
And/or put it on an SSD for speed.

You could shrink the videos with handbrake individually (to H265) to get it under 1tb just to back it up more easily but like I said, fiddly and a lot of work.

Thanks,

-Jason
----------------------------------
Sent from my iPhone
----------------------------------

[Benjamin Phillips]

Thank you Jason and Sam for your suggestions.

SSD is probably worth a look at but added cost outlay I begrudge when I have so much capacity free in mechanical drives. Once the library has finished loading I will look to split into 2 and then start a fresh library for the new decade.

The library is well backed up. It is sitting on an external drive in raid 5 configuration and all my data is backed up to the cloud using the service Backblaze. Not intended as a commercial advertisement but I have found them an amazing product and good value for unlimited data backup. I currently have over 30TB backed up with them.

Benjamin Phillips

benjamin...@gmail.com

Sent from my MacBook Air

You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups "Sussex Mac User Group" group.
To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/smug/HX0KDaoqMEk/unsubscribe.
To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to smug+uns...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/smug/994D07E8-9AF7-4378-ABA7-2ED3AC36896A.goodhumans%40app.preside.io.

[Jason Davies]

Fair enough - in that case, tbh, I wouldn't bother splitting it unless
you have a good reason. I suggested that because of the lower cost of a
1TB disk (true, they're not what they were but it's still extra cost).

I'd just start again with a new photo library if you want to stick with
the disks you have (perfectly understandable). When I tried a smaller
scale version of this it became extremely difficult to keep track
because anomalies appeared (eg duplicates). If I did it again, having a
clear cut off (eg 1 June 2020) would have been very useful.

cheers everyone (hope you're all keeping well)
Jason

On 27 May 2020, at 11:10, Benjamin Phillips wrote:

> SSD is probably worth a look at but added cost outlay I begrudge when
> I have so much capacity free in mechanical drives. Once the library
> has finished loading I will look to split into 2 and then start a
> fresh library for the new decade.
>
>
>
> The library is well backed up. It is sitting on an external drive in
> raid 5 configuration and all my data is backed up to the cloud using
> the service Backblaze. Not intended as a commercial advertisement but
> I have found them an amazing product and good value for unlimited data
> backup. I currently have over 30TB backed up with them.

Cheers,

Jason