Resolved iCloud Drive not working on my main user account

[JedNZ]

Ever since upgrading to macOS Sonoma (months ago) I’ve had issues with my iCloud Drive on my Mac (see sig). I thought I’d be smart and followed some suggestions somewhere to manually delete some iCloud ~/Library items which was supposed to trigger a full download sync of my files, but it’s done nothing more than bork iCloud for me.

• In System Settings I can turn iCloud Drive on and off (with “off” it comes up with an option asking if I want to continue syncing before it stops with a status bar that never moves after leaving it for hours or even overnight) - I can also cancel and it just turns iCloud off.
• Finder shows iCloud Drive but no files ever appear.
• It never allows me to Optimise - the toggle switch moves back to off a second or two later).
• I’ve logged out of iCloud and restarted and logged back into iCloud again countless times but it never resolves the issue.
• I tried doing Time Machine restore of ~/Library/Mobile Documents but that never triggered and synced. My TM backup doesn’t have my original working iCloud folder structure - it’s purged over time.
• I can log into iCloud on another user account and it syncs/downloads all my files nicely so the issue sits with my primary account losing its iCloud mojo.

I’ve spent many hours searching for instructions on how to repair/fix my system so iCloud works but there’s nothing I can find that covers this.

I’d prefer not to create a new user account and then have to set up apps and copy my user data across (over 2.8TB of files including Photos, iTunes Media, vast numbers of design and video assets and projects etc).

What I would like is a comprehensive list of the actual essential folders and resources that need to be in the ~/Library folder that make iCloud work including ACL or permission settings so I can try and trigger iCloud to work properly again. Are there Terminal commands that help with this?

Looking for some solid advice or direction on where to look further. Even advice on migrating all my user data to a new user account so I can understand how big a job lor how easy it might be.

 

[JedNZ]

I’m at the point now where I think I’ll have to reinstall macOS. But here is the dilemma:
1. My boot drive is on a NVMe blade - it has two spare admin accounts on it that don’t contain any important user data. So I can wipe and reinstall Sonoma quite easily.
2. User data for me and two other family members is on a Fusion Drive (NVMe + HDD).

After reinstalling macOS I’ll create the User accounts for my family members and myself and then point them in System Settings > Users and Groups (advanced settings) to their respective existing User accounts on the Fusion Drive. But will this fix my problem by triggering a repair on my ~/Library folder which is where I suspect iCloud is broken? If not then it’s a waste of time reinstalling macOS if it doesn’t fix the issues in my User ~/Library folder.

So perhaps I just create a new User account on my Fusion Drive (remember, iCloud does work properly with another spare User account on the Fusion Drive so I’m certain it’s my main User account ~/Library folder that is screwed, it’s nothing to do with the actual boot drive). But how do I move all my existing User data (2TB+) on the Fusion Drive to another new User account on the Fusion Drive without screwing permissions or ACLs etc? Anyone know of any built in terminal commands that would do it? How about all my emails and other User data hiding in the ~/Library folder - how would I manually move that?

I do have a Time Machine backup (plus CCC backup) of my User account but I won’t be able to restore it because it’ll just copy the corrupted iCloud ~/Library folder stuff. Disclaimer: When I moved to Sonoma I completely reinstalled my boot drive from scratch and reinstalled all my apps. I tried restoring my User account via Time Machine but it would only do so to the boot drive, not to the Fusion Drive. I created my user account and then pointed it to a folder on my Fusion Drive (Users/username), and then tried to restore from TM but it failed a number of times probably due to the size of my Photos library (500GB) and vast other user data, emails etc. So I resorted to manually moving my User account data from the TM backup (which I know is not the recommended method). This is likely where the iCloud issues started because I had all sorts of other issues with permissions.

Moving on, i suppose I can delete my user account and then create a new one with the same name and then try TM to restore all my data but I’m afraid I’ll encounter the same issues as when I installed Sonoma where it failed numerous times to copy all my user data and it could copy my broken iCloud ~/Library files that will continue to break iCloud Drive.

There's probably a really clear solution to this and I’m over complicating it.

 

[JedNZ]

Huge update.

I decided to convert my HFS+ Fusion Drive to APFS. I did that by boosting into recovery and under Disk Utility > Edit menu I chose the Convert to APFS option. It took a few hours (3.5TB of data) and it successfully converted the FD from HFS+ to APFS. What I didn't expect was that iCloud Drive immediately reconnected, and I can also toggle the Optimise Mac Storage option in Settings > iCloud. Hugely happy with that.

The interesting thing is I haven't found any mention anywhere that an HFS+ formatted Fusion Drive might not work with iCloud, and that an APFS formatted FD is recommended or required. I hope this helps anyone else facing the same problem.