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Photos taking forever to "Prepare Library"

I have had a few issues with Photos crashing for no reason and as I am running the current version of Mojave I thought I should update the firmware on my Drobo 5D external drive - which is where I store my Photos Library. The Harddrive completed its update so I opened Photos only to be faced with a blank screen and spinning disc (not the rainbow wheel). When nothing happened after a while I tried to quit Photos and the message came up "unable to quit while Photos is creating or preparing a library". I have updated firmware in the past with no issues. I have a large Library (approx. 950GB) so understand things take time. It has been 8 hours now and it is hard to tell if anything has happened. Should I just be patient or is there a way to tell if there is actually a library being prepared. Or should I force quit and try a Photo Repair??


iMac Line (2012 and Later)

Posted on Jun 14, 2019 10:37 PM

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Posted on Jun 15, 2019 4:16 PM

So backed up my images library onto a second external hard drive I keep off site and decided to take the plunge and force quit. Force quit, shut down computer and restarted, opened Photos app and all seems OK. Hopefully Photos will now stop crashing too.

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3 replies

Jun 15, 2019 2:14 PM in response to Old Toad

Hi yes I have had this hard drive connected and in use without any issues for almost 18 months. It is connected via Thunderbolt and yes was formatted etc when I installed it. When I open the Drobo dashboard all is well and my Photos library is there. I also use this hard drive for my TM backups which are also working fine.

Photos taking forever to "Prepare Library"

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