Dan Moren, writing for Six Colors:

One of the more interesting features of Photos for Mac is its ability to not store my entire photo library on my Mac’s drive. It does this by syncing the entire library to iCloud Photo Library and then dynamically loading and unloading photos as you use it.

This is a nice feature to have if your photo library is big and your hard drive space is limited. The post is definitely worth reading, just so you understand the basics and can turn to this approach if it ever becomes necessary.

My only concern is what to do if something goes wrong. If some (or most) of your photos are stored in the cloud, how do you recover them if things go south. As is, I manage all my photos on a Mac with plenty of drive space. I back up that Mac regularly, then occasionally back up that backup to an external drive I keep off site.

Losing my photos would be devastating to me. How easy is it to recover from a scenario where my photos are split between storage mechanisms?