Moving 1.6 TB from OneDrive to iCloud Photos — can I preserve my folder structure?

Help and Support
1

Hey everyone,

I’m switching from a Samsung Galaxy to an iPhone. My entire photo and video collection—about 1.6 TB—has been stored on OneDrive for years, carefully organized into folders and subfolders.

For example:

CONCERTS → ROCK → METALLICA → MetLife 2025

I’d like to move everything into iCloud Photos, keeping that hierarchy as folders and albums in the iPhone’s Photos app.

I have access to a Mac, but given the size of the collection, I’m also wondering whether rClone could help me.

Has anyone successfully done something similar? Would it preserve the folder structure, original quality, and capture dates for both photos and videos?

I’d really appreciate any firsthand advice before I start moving everything.

2

welcome to the forum,

no, rclone access to iphotos is read-only.
you can list files and download files but not upload.

might try the following on your mach:

  1. run rclone mount to access the onedrive files locally.
  2. using the mountpoint as the source, use icloud or other software to upload the photos to iphotos.

mounting on mac, can be tricky. i think @kapitainsky has experience with that?