I have 400 GB of photos and video on an external hard drive that I'd like to transfer over into iCloud/Photo's app. My internal hard drive is only 256GB. Is it possible to move all the photos and video over without eating up my entire internal hard drive (not to mention I don't have enough internal hard drive space to match my external hard drive)?
Mac Studio (2023)
No. iCloud is a syncing service. Anything on iCloud by definition must also exist on the device or computer it is being synced from. Anything then removed from the device would sync to iCloud and remove it form there as well.
You can however, sync directly from the external drive. If you use the Photos App on a Mac, and have the system Photo Library stored on an external drive, it will sync directly from there to iCloud when you turn on iCloud Photos without using space on the internal drive.
Do note however, that any other device trying to access the photos from iCloud would need to also download them, and such, would also require the same 400GB of space.
Other services, like Dropbox or Google Drive, offer off device storage, and as such do not require 400GB of available space assuming you don't download the entire library to them.
Hello,
you could also log in at icloud[.]com and upload your photos to your iCloud Drive. iCloud Drive is a service complementary with iCloud syncing service that offers storage for your files. Photos uploaded to iCloud Drive won't be showing in Photo app though. To access them you need to open Files (iOS, iPadOS) or Finder (MacOS) and go to iCloud Drive.
Oh yah, thanks Phil0124! I forgot you can move the photo library to an external. That will save a TON of space. Side note, I also leverage Dropbox for data redundancies. I've lost too many important moments in the past. Trying to mitigate any issues. Thank you for the tip.
Is it possible to add more photos and video to iCloud/Photos app without it taking up space on connected comptuers/phones?
