Improving performance of Photos for Mac

[swandy]

Did a few Google searches but couldn't find anything helpful. I have a question about improving the performance of the Photos for Mac app. Now granted my Photos library (mid-2015 iMac running latest Mojave and Photos versions) is a bit on the large size (over 85,000 photos/videos and a bit under 700GB) and is on an external Western Digital USB 3.0 drive. All the photos - should be obvious by the size of the library - are in the library itself (having the app set for downloading all originals). But at times it seems to drag - Auto Enhancing a photo, swiping back and forth between photos - and I get the pretty little pinwheels. Not overly long - usually less than 20-30 seconds or so.
My question is would the app run better if:
(1) I had it Optimized for Storage - which means everything would be stored in iCloud and only downloaded when I want to view a larger photo and/or edit.
(2) And, if I did change to the Optimized version, would moving the library to my internal HD on the iMac make a difference? (Not reasonable now considering the size of the library.)
Thanks for any ideas/suggestions.
(BTW - I have considered dividing up the large library into two smaller ones, but would prefer not to go that route as the slow-downs are not really annoying at this point.)

 

[ferrarr]

How much memory (ram) is installed? Also, which video card is installed? And, is this a 21" or 27", 4k or 5k?

In my opinion, when running off an external you will see those beachballs, because the processor, is waiting for the drive to finish what it is doing. I don't know if you will be able to totally remove those, unless you get an external SSD drive.

 

[pm-r]

Thanks for any ideas/suggestions.

Why not create a new small Photos Library to use for testing and see if things improve or not. If it's still sluggish, then there must be something else wrong.

You won't know until you try testing I would think.

I imagine the old method of holding down the option key when booting photos still works to allow creating a new library.


- Patrick
======

 

[swandy]

How much memory (ram) is installed? Also, which video card is installed? And, is this a 21" or 27", 4k or 5k?

In my opinion, when running off an external you will see those beachballs, because the processor, is waiting for the drive to finish what it is doing. I don't know if you will be able to totally remove those, unless you get an external SSD drive.

iMac 21.5" mid-2015/Intel Iris Pro Graphics 6200 1536 MB/16GB RAM/Retina 4K/3.1 GHz Intel Core i5
Like I said not terribly old, but those are the specs.

- - - Updated - - -

Why not create a new small Photos Library to use for testing and see if things improve or not. If it's still sluggish, then there must be something else wrong.

You won't know until you try testing I would think.

I imagine the old method of holding down the option key when booting photos still works to allow creating a new library.


- Patrick
======

I might try that but don't know if not making the new test library the System Library would effect the results or not. (And don't want to make it the System Library as that would cause the annoying iCloud Photo Update/Upload/Download delays.