If iCloud Have More Stuff than Your Hard Drive, What Will Happen?

[seasurfer]

I am just curious, let's say I get the 1TB iCloud. I fill up 600GB of it, but my iMac 5K has only 256KB of space, what will happen?

What will also happen to my iPhone and iPad?

Will the system automatically download everything? Selective sync option is not available.

 

[BradWould]

I am just curious, let's say I get the 1TB iCloud. I fill up 600GB of it, but my iMac 5K has only 256KB of space, what will happen?

What will also happen to my iPhone and iPad?

Will the system automatically download everything? Selective sync option is not available.

I don't know how it works with other files. But with photos a certain number of photos is stored locally and for the rest only a thumbnail is saved on your phone. If you select the thumbnail the photo downloads. If you look at your library all photos appear to be there but most are in the cloud. I believe Apple takes local storage and which photos are most used into account when deciding what is to be stored locally. Works great for me.

 

[seasurfer]

No one has a bigger iCloud than the hard drive?

 

[BradWould]

No one has a bigger iCloud than the hard drive?

I definitely do. I have an iPhone with 64gb and a 200gb iCloud account. It works the way I explained in my above post.

 

[seasurfer]

I definitely do. I have an iPhone with 64gb and a 200gb iCloud account. It works the way I explained in my above post.

Thanks for the reply. But you only answered the issue in relation to photos. I need to know if I put other things in my iCloud, and let's say my iCloud take up to 600GB, but I only have 256GB on iMac 5K, what will happen to my iMac, will everything get downloaded and fill up my iMac?

 

[BradWould]

Thanks for the reply. But you only answered the issue in relation to photos. I need to know if I put other things in my iCloud, and let's say my iCloud take up to 600GB, but I only have 256GB on iMac 5K, what will happen to my iMac, will everything get downloaded and fill up my iMac?

In that case I would say no worries. You can have all the files you want in the cloud without having them on your computer at all. Just access them in finder under iCloud Drive. It acts as if its an external hard drive.

 

[seasurfer]

In that case I would say no worries. You can have all the files you want in the cloud without having them on your computer at all. Just access them in finder under iCloud Drive. It acts as if its an external hard drive.

View attachment 599857

And that is the question I am asking. Once you start accessing that iCloud folder, it will start to download everything into your iMac or Mac book pro's hard drive.

Therefore come the question if iCloud is bigger than your hard drive how does the system handle it?

 

[seasurfer]

For anyone with a lot of things in the iCloud, please kindly share your experience on how it works on your iMac or MacBook Pro. Thanks.

 

[Tech198]

I'll give it a shot, but if it's anything like Dropbox does, when u'r hard drive becomes full, it will just stop sync'ing.

Update: I have not increased cloud drive storage since u get 5gig free.... however i filled my ssd up then attempt to drag and drop folder to icloud drive... Result: Nothing happened.

So while i did this in reverse, its probably safe to say if u have not got free space on your hard drive, any remains files in iCloud drive will not sync.

icloud drive would be just a folder that sync's anyway.

 

[seasurfer]

I'll give it a shot, but if it's anything like Dropbox does, when u'r hard drive becomes full, it will just stop sync'ing.

Update: I have not increased cloud drive storage since u get 5gig free.... however i filled my ssd up then attempt to drag and drop folder to icloud drive... Result: Nothing happened.

So while i did this in reverse, its probably safe to say if u have not got free space on your hard drive, any remains files in iCloud drive will not sync.

icloud drive would be just a folder that sync's anyway.

Will it also be safe to say that iCloud drive will not sync more files if your hard disk is full, but if you have a lot of things in the iCloud drive, it will at least try to fill up your hard disk space, until it is also full?

If that is the case, it is quite sad. My 256GB iMac 5K will soon be fill if I save all my stuff in the iCloud.

 

[BradWould]

Will it also be safe to say that iCloud drive will not sync more files if your hard disk is full, but if you have a lot of things in the iCloud drive, it will at least try to fill up your hard disk space, until it is also full?

If that is the case, it is quite sad. My 256GB iMac 5K will soon be fill if I save all my stuff in the iCloud.

iCloud Drive does not automatically fill up your hard drive with files. I've been following this thread for awhile now and I don't understand where this is coming from. Yes I only use my cloud storage for photos right now but as I know it ICloud Drive acts as a separate external drive. If you save to it instead of your internal hard drive it won't write to both. You can open, edit and save files to iCloud Drive and not keep them on your Mac at all. It's not an automatic backup service. Therefore you could have 10 TB of data in your iCloud Drive (if you had the space) and it would not automatically populate your physical iMac hard drive. The only way it will is if you put the files on the physical drive yourself.

 

[seasurfer]

iCloud Drive does not automatically fill up your hard drive with files. I've been following this thread for awhile now and I don't understand where this is coming from. Yes I only use my cloud storage for photos right now but as I know it ICloud Drive acts as a separate external drive. If you save to it instead of your internal hard drive it won't write to both. You can open, edit and save files to iCloud Drive and not keep them on your Mac at all. It's not an automatic backup service. Therefore you could have 10 TB of data in your iCloud Drive (if you had the space) and it would not automatically populate your physical iMac hard drive. The only way it will is if you put the files on the physical drive yourself.

Here is what I noticed. The iCloud Drive folder on my iMac and MacBook Pro downloaded everything from my iCloud drive! How do you explain that? And hence the reason why I open this thread before buying the 1TB storage.

Granted my iCloud Drive is only 5GB, but I am thinking of getting the 1TB option and store all my things there.

If I am going to upload all my videos, files or whatever junks from my external hard disk to the iCloud, I am scare it will all be downloaded to my iCloud Drive Folder on my iMac and MacBook Pro and fill up my hard disk space, something I do not want.

As far as I know, there is no selective synchronization like Dropbox...correct me if I am wrong.

 

[BradWould]

Here is what I noticed. The iCloud Drive folder on my iMac and MacBook Pro downloaded everything from my iCloud drive! How do you explain that? And hence the reason why I open this thread before buying the 1TB storage.

Granted my iCloud Drive is only 5GB, but I am thinking of getting the 1TB option and store all my things there.

If I am going to upload all my videos, files or whatever junks from my external hard disk to the iCloud, I am scare it will all be downloaded to my iCloud Drive Folder on my iMac and MacBook Pro and fill up my hard disk space, something I do not want.

As far as I know, there is no selective synchronization like Dropbox...correct me if I am wrong.

My apologies. I understand now and I was wrong. For some reason I assumed that the iCloud Drive folder was a representation of a remote drive and not actually taking up space on my hdd. I never had to worry about it because I don't use it for much. But I verified by moving a 2gb movie file into my iCloud Drive it took 2gb from my hdd. I guess it's my fault for assuming this wouldn't be the case because it just doesn't make sense to do it that way. Best of luck finding a solution.