iCloud Drive as External Storage

[aquaboy]

Hi,

I have a 2TB subscription to iCloud

I wish to back up my external hard drive to folders within my iCloud Drive

But when I create a folder on iCloud Drive and drag and drop from my external drive to the new folder in iCloud Drive ... the files seem to fill up on my Mac HD (somewhere!) and I run out of space.

Am I doing it wrong?
Thanks

 

[keysofanxiety]

Nope, it also stores a local copy. Pretty frustrating. No way to copy directly to iCloud Drive on your Mac.

You can upload it through the iCloud website so it'll be directly on iCloud, but if you do that, it wouldn't be visible in iCloud Drive on your Mac (I kid you not).

 

[Brookzy]

Store in iCloud combined with Optimise Storage could achieve a similar end, albeit files will be stored locally as space permits. https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT206996

You can upload it through the iCloud website so it'll be directly on iCloud, but if you do that, it wouldn't be visible in iCloud Drive on your Mac (I kid you not).

Really?!

 

[aquaboy]

Thanks, I think I’d rather give my money to Dropbox then. Shame!!

 

[maflynn]

Thanks, I think I’d rather give my money to Dropbox then. Shame!!

The very nature of DropBox fits nicely with what you're looking to do, having both files exist both locally and in the cloud.

I suppose you can make iCloud work, with using some software or scripting, but I think overall DropBox is a simpler and more elegant solution in this case.

 

[aquaboy]

Yeah, I want the best of both but don’t want to pay twice. My iPhone library is about 250gb so I have to use the 2TB iCloud plan to get the benefits of storing my photos and videos remotely. But I can’t use the remaining 1.75tb the way I want too. I wish there was a cheaper 500gb iCloud plan!

 

[Tech198]

That's not just icloud drive... It how any cloud storage work... Dropbox is the same ..

If there is no local copy and users just store it, users will complain "where did my files go" Perhaps there should be an option to keep on hard drive or not...

Optimize storage helps,, but that's it as its only recent files that are lost, or Apple devices what a recent file is..... For the rest, that's what backup's are for.

Personally, manually done is the only way.. I don't trust Apple's features where they decide.

 

[BigMcGuire]

That's not just icloud drive... It how any cloud storage work... Dropbox is the same ..

If there is no local copy and users just store it, users will complain "where did my files go" Perhaps there should be an option to keep on hard drive or not...

Optimize storage helps,, but that's it as its only recent files that are lost, or Apple devices what a recent file is..... For the rest, that's what backup's are for.

Personally, manually done is the only way.. I don't trust Apple's features where they decide.

You can store stuff in Google Drive, One Drive, Dropbox, and many others without it being FORCED to sync locally. It's called Selective Sync. So correction - most cloud storage providers allow this - iCloud does not and users have been asking for selective sync for a long ... long time.