iMac 2015 running monterey with 50K foto's and videos issue

Question

iMac 2015 running monterey with 50K foto's and videos issue

A friend of mine has an iMac from 2015 running MacOS monterey.

He is a foto enthousiast and has about 50K foto's and videos.

Because of storage lack on his holiday he recently upgraded iCloud to a 2 TB subscription.

I found that the iMac HDD sized 120GB has only then 10GB storage left.

He is experiencing issues with trying to edit the foto's and videos on iCloud.

I include some pictures (sorry in Dutch) of the issues:

+ Operation (edit photo) not possible

+ Internet connection required (on archive menu options)

+ Foto showing downloading foto's: that number has not changed over a week, so not downloading

Is there anything he can do to get rid of these issues without changing hardware?

Help much appreciated.

Regards, Herman

[Edited by Moderator]

Earlier Mac models

Posted on Jun 30, 2025 2:29 PM

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Answer 1

den.thed

Level 10

89,074 points

Jun 30, 2025 4:57 PM in response to herman_intveen

To move the Photos Library to an external drive,

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

To move the Movie Library to an external drive,

see > Move your iMovie for Mac library - Apple Support

Another biggy that can use a lot of space is the Music Library,

see > Change where your music files are stored on Mac - Apple Support

Just keep in mind that the Media Libraries should be backed up to a second external drive or Time Machine.

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Answer 2

John Galt

Level 10

153,784 points

Jun 30, 2025 2:48 PM in response to herman_intveen

herman_intveen wrote:

I found that the iMac HDD sized 120GB has only then 10GB storage left.

Even ten years ago 120 GB was an exiguous amount of storage. Your friend needs to offload that onto another storage device. An external solid state drive would be the obvious solution.

If you don't know where to start, https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/owc-envoy-ultra

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Answer 3

Yer_Man

Level 10

165,576 points

Jul 1, 2025 4:20 AM in response to herman_intveen

but offload probably means that these are no longer available in Mac Photo?

No it doesn't. What you do is move the Photos library to an external drive formatted Mac OS X Extended, Journaled or apfs. It will then work exactly before. See the first link in den.thed's reply.

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Answer 4

den.thed

Level 10

89,074 points

Jul 1, 2025 11:24 AM in response to herman_intveen

You’re welcome.

If the user doesn’t understand or is careless with external devices. Then perhaps the best thing to do, is to have them get rid of some useless stuff. One way to do that, is to simple say that you can not fit 2 gallons of water into a 1 gallon bucket.

Free up storage space on Mac - Apple Support

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Answer 5

Jul 1, 2025 7:18 AM in response to den.thed

Thanks den.thed for your useful links.

I read the articles on moving the photos and Movie library and I think I understand the steps.

Please keep in mind me friend is only and end user, without this kind of knowledge/experience.

My friend has removable devices plugged in that are USB based andI will use iCloud for Photo/Video storage.

I read what to do when an external device is switched off, that seems logical to me.

But what if the usb device gets damaged and the library gets corrupted: is rebuilding it from iCloud feasible?

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Answer 6

den.thed

Level 10

89,074 points

Jul 3, 2025 6:23 AM in response to herman_intveen

Things get complicated, went you start splitting up data and stuff in different places.

The Media Libraries should be backed up to a second external drive or Time Machine.

Again iCloud is for sharing data between devices and not a backup.

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Answer 7

Jul 1, 2025 3:18 AM in response to John Galt

Thanks @John Galt but offload probably means that these are no longer available in Mac Photo?

Furthermore can you still store these photos on iCloud with 1 backup on USB storage?

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Answer 8

John Galt

Level 10

153,784 points

Jul 1, 2025 5:43 AM in response to herman_intveen

You can store those photos and videos in iCloud, but editing them occurs on the Mac. This is the reason they need to be stored locally. den.thed's instructions describe how to accomplish that.

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Answer 9

Jul 1, 2025 6:58 AM in response to John Galt

Thanks @John Galt I will use den.thed's instructions.

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Answer 10

Jul 1, 2025 7:00 AM in response to Yer_Man

Thanks Yer_Man I will use den.thed's instructions.

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Answer 11

Jul 3, 2025 3:02 AM in response to den.thed

Thanks den.thed I get your point, but that does not answer my question:

if the usb device gets damaged and the library gets corrupted: is rebuilding it from iCloud feasible?

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