Impact on iCloud Drive of deleting user account on iMac

[gwhizkids]

My daughter has a user account on our family iMac. She also has an MBA of her own. Both are signed into same iCloud account and have the iCloud Drive Desktop and Document folder backup feature running.

I'd like to delete her account from the iMac to free up resources there. However, I'm concerned that deleting the account on the iMac could cause her desktop and document files to disappear from her MBA if iCloud "thinks" I've deleted those files on the iMac when I delete the user account.

Should I be concerned?

 

[KALLT]

Why don’t you log out of iCloud first? This is something you should do anyway.

 

[gwhizkids]

Why don’t you log out of iCloud first? This is something you should do anyway.

Had planned to do that, but my concern is that iCloud Drive will stop "seeing" the docs on the iMac, assume they're deleted and then proceed to delete them from MBA. Will logging out prevent that? Do I need to log out on both ends or just the iMac?

 

[KALLT]

iCloud uploads files to a server. If they have appeared on the other device, then that process is complete. You can then proceed to log out to sever the connection. It should not impact the files on the other device, as they are in iCloud and stored on the other device.

 

[gwhizkids]

iCloud uploads files to a server. If they have appeared on the other device, then that process is complete. You can then proceed to log out to sever the connection. It should not impact the files on the other device, as they are in iCloud and stored on the other device.

Thanks! Had just heard some horror stories about people having 2 macs and losing files with the iCloud Drive service. Your approach makes sense, though.

 

[KALLT]

I don’t really trust iCloud either. The caution is definitely appropriate. You can also make sure that the iMac is backed up properly, e.g. with Time Machine. However, logging out of the account after the sync process has completed is Apple’s recommended way.