Back in April of 2015, I transferred all of my iPhoto pictures to the new Apple Photos. Â It took awhile but the process went pretty smoothly.
A week or so back, my Apple MacBook Pro gave me a pop up box that said that the hard disk was just about full. Â I thought “yeah, yeah, yeah it’s probably nothing.” Â Then I tried transferring photos from my Panasonic Lumix camera over to Photos and they would not transfer over.
When I checked the storage on the hard drive, it said I had 18 GB left out of 246. Â I noticed that I had not deleted the iPhoto libraries (I had two), Â so I checked to see how much was being used there. Â The first library showed 108 GB and the second library showed 1.9 GB.
I used logic (anyone who knows me probably questions this) and determined that if I deleted both of the iPhoto files that that would automatically give me approximately 109 GB of additional storage space. Â That is logical, isn’t it? Â
Not being a computer “techie,” I checked with all the computer gurus I knew and they told me it was okay to delete the iPhoto files since those pictures were transferred over to Photos and were basically duplicates.
Trepeditously, I deleted the two libraries from iPhoto, made sure the Photos files weren’t affected and then removed them from the trash.
What a piece of cake, I thought. Â Then I went to see how much my hard drive storage had increased. Â Uh, nothing. Â The hard drive had increased zilch-o. Â Nada. Â Nothing. Â Can I say it any other way? Â Does anyone know why this would be the case?
And thus began the journey of going through every picture I have in Photos since 2008 to determine whether to delete it or keep it. Â Talk about time consuming. Â Haven’t seen hardly any new posts on my blog recently? Â This explains why.
Looking back, it’s amazing how many ugly pictures I took. Â Then there are the fuzzy ones, the ones I took from different angles 15 times to make sure the lighting was just right, the overexposed, the underexposed and even ones that I had to ask myself “who really cares?” (that’s a whole ‘nother topic …)
I never ~ and I mean never ~ thought about deleting the pictures that weren’t good. Â Never had the words “storage space or hard drive” crossed my mind. Â Blah.
Sure, I could just put them on a disk and when I die let some poor soul decide what to do with them all … but I’ve been that poor soul in the past, and I have to say “What’s most important to me will probably not be important to someone else.”
Good news though! Â I’ve finally made it to the year 2013. Â Clap, clap, clap. Â Aren’t you happy for me? Â Not even a wee bit?
And do you know how much storage space I have freed up? Â An additional 49GB for a total of 67 free GB. Â That sounds like such a pittance ~ but then, I’m not a tech guru.
Once finished, I’ll put my Photos library 1 on a disk and just work with my second library.
Lesson learned? Â Get rid of the unwanted photos shortly after you download them. It will save you a lot of time and heartache in the long run.