Need to merge photos from too many places...

[EmMcK]

We have a 9 year old Mac that creaks ominously. On that we have iPhotos with around 11k photos. It is also what we use to access photos on the icloud.
We changed to android devices about 2 years ago so have a whole lot of things on the google cloud too.
I am trying to amalgamate the photos but the iMac is SO slow and makes scary noises and I am worried that it is going o die. Would getting a 2 terabyte hard drive and just getting everything off th mac on to that be a stupid idea, or am I over thinking this?

[Exp1etiveDeLighted]

Do it. We had a similar situation, old Mac creaking along, then the hard drive failed. Luckily we had made various random backups and all the more recent stuff was still on my phone and we eventually managed to restore it all but it was tricky as the drivers for one of the old backup drives no longer worked. I have now bought a new backup drive and systematically backed up the whole lot again and am going to keep it up to date from now on. It was quite upsetting when the hard drive went and I thought we might have lost a few years worth.