30 year win user.. Photos help!

I’ve decided to give myself a stroke. Steve was right windows is the devil.

I’m in love with apple again.

My problem is I have almost 3 decades of photos organised in folder structures. Usually year/month. Pretty simple. Each folder holds photos and videos.

I keep a full copy of this on one drive in its full structure and a hard copy on my NAS.

I mostly just add to this and then use the one drive app on phone if I want to view anything as it does it over the internet without actually downloading anything.

I’ve never used OneDrive on the PC always used the browser to sort add photos/videos and view.

I know in photos on my MacBook I can import a folder structure but my issue is my photos album is 480gb.

What’s the best solution for me to move away from one drive and start using photos app more or is this head ache not worth it?

Thanks.

Fishrrman said:

OP wrote:
"I have almost 3 decades of photos organised in folder structures. Usually year/month. Pretty simple. Each folder holds photos and videos."

Why is this a problem?
I've always been a Mac user (going on 40 years now).
I've always kept my photos in exactly the same kind of structure:
Folders (name includes date and subject), with the actual "files" inside.

If you use Apple's Photos app, just set the preference to NOT "import" photos into the Photos database...

Click to expand...

I didn't know this was an option?

I did some Reading and learnt how to use photos to what I needed.

On the left under Albums I've created folders for each year then inside that a Month.
example

2025
....January 05.
....February 05
2024
....January 04.
....February 04.
2023
....January 03.
....February 03.

I gave the albums ending "name" so i know which year its from when viewing in other places instead of it just saying in album "January" for example.

I didn't realize how many duplicates I had. I've had some fun viewing my photos last few days, its very easy with the photos app and across devices is awesome. It works well, fair play to Apple.