Eclecticlightcompany points out serious problems with iCloud backups

[Speed38]

The eclecticlightcompany has an article today titled "macOS Sonoma has changed iCloud Drive radically”. Much of it is waaay over my head, but may make sense/be of interest to others.

macOS Sonoma has changed iCloud Drive radically

The small stub files used as placeholders for files evicted to iCloud Drive have vanished. Could that be why some Macs had to download the whole contents of their iCloud Drive?

eclecticlight.co

Its conclusions are:

Summary

Sonoma brings radical changes to iCloud Drive, including the removal of traditional stub files for those files evicted to iCloud.

Those changes may result in macOS completely wiping local iCloud Drive storage and downloading its entire contents from iCloud.

That appears more likely to occur if you have Optimise Mac Storage turned off, and some files evicted to iCloud Drive.

If you’re not prepared to turn Optimise Mac Storage on before upgrading to Sonoma, you may have to wait for all your files stored in iCloud Drive to be downloaded to your Mac.

 

[SoupyTwist]

It's also worth checking if the "Optimise Mac Storage" setting stays as you want it.

On my work MacBook today iCloud decided to fill up my drive with local copies of all my iCloud files, only found out when Photoshop complained about having no space left for the scratch disk! Turns out "Optimise Mac Storage" had turned itself off.

This was on Ventura, but I've heard of it happening on other versions too.

 

[chrfr]

The eclecticlightcompany has an article today titled "macOS Sonoma has changed iCloud Drive radically”. Much of it is waaay over my head, but may make sense/be of interest to others.

macOS Sonoma has changed iCloud Drive radically

The small stub files used as placeholders for files evicted to iCloud Drive have vanished. Could that be why some Macs had to download the whole contents of their iCloud Drive?

eclecticlight.co

Its conclusions are:

Summary

Sonoma brings radical changes to iCloud Drive, including the removal of traditional stub files for those files evicted to iCloud.

Those changes may result in macOS completely wiping local iCloud Drive storage and downloading its entire contents from iCloud.

That appears more likely to occur if you have Optimise Mac Storage turned off, and some files evicted to iCloud Drive.

If you’re not prepared to turn Optimise Mac Storage on before upgrading to Sonoma, you may have to wait for all your files stored in iCloud Drive to be downloaded to your Mac.

Not iCloud backups, which is the term generally used to describe the iOS/iPadOS backup process but rather iCloud Drive.
It's also not so much a problem as just a reworking of how iCloud Drive operates under the hood.

 

[Speed38]

Not iCloud backups, which is the term generally used to describe the iOS/iPadOS backup process but rather iCloud Drive.
It's also not so much a problem as just a reworking of how iCloud Drive operates under the hood.

Are you saying that there's nothing here about which we should be concerned? Seems like an awfully long, detailed article to be "much ado about nothing"?

 

[chrfr]

Are you saying that there's nothing here about which we should be concerned? Seems like an awfully long, detailed article to be "much ado about nothing"?

That writer goes into a lot of technical details that have not much effect on end users in many cases.

 

[Speed38]

Got it! Thanks.