Is there a way to save documents *only* on iCloud Drive?

[carlsson]

As the subject; Is there a way to save documents only on iCloud Drive?

For example:
I have 138 GB of old documents located on an external drive. I have only 130 GB left on my Mac, but 1,57 TB on iCloud Drive.
I want to copy these documents to iCloud Drive, so I don't need that old drive (and also have an extra backup).

If I remember correctly, earlier I could open iCloud Drive (in Finder) and copy stuff there, bypassing the storage on my local drive. But this is not possible any more – The Mac tells me I need 8 GB more space (or maybe I remember it wrong).

Any ideas?

Tia,
Andreas

 

[jpn]

hi

i wonder if the combination of doing a couple of things would work:

1 on yr mac set iCloud's iCloud Drive to Optimize storage. this will automatically allow the system to discover when it considers yr disk becoming too full and remove documents you haven't used in a while to iCloud only, not storing them on yr local disk

2 partition your mac disk to some very small space, such as 25 GB or something that would be the only space that iCloud sees thereby forcing iCloud's Optimization to continually remove older files to iCloud Drive only.

 

[carlsson]

Thanks for the input.

Actually, I thought I had "Optimized storage" on, but it was off. Now I turned it on, and started copying. I got no warning and it currently is copying. We'll see what happens.

This might solve this situation, but I would anyway like to have a "Only in iCloud" solution. I hope that Cupertino is working on a solution for this.

 

[chabig]

I would anyway like to have a "Only in iCloud" solution. I hope that Cupertino is working on a solution for this.

I doubt it. Optimize storage takes care of things for you, so an option like that isn't needed.

 

[carlsson]

I doubt it. Optimize storage takes care of things for you, so an option like that isn't needed.

It may be needed by several reasons. Eg, I only have 40 GB free space on my Mac, and now I want to install a virtual machine with Parallells or Fusion. I want that VM to be 100 GB big. This is a no go, since the OS reports only 40 GB of free space.

With a manual function for separate storage, I could put away stuff that I don't care about so much (movies, music, Mobile Sync backups etc) on iCloud Drive.

And I guess that there are several more examples than this...

 

[chabig]

If you create a 100GB VM, optimize storage will make space by deleting local iCloud files. It’s automatic.

 

[carlsson]

If you create a 100GB VM, optimize storage will make space by deleting local iCloud files. It’s automatic.

It won’t work. Fusion, and Parallells as well I think, will not be able to create a bigger partition than what’s available on your drive.

 

[danemacmillan]

@carlsson There is actually a Finder extension called iCloud Control, https://github.com/Obbut/iCloud-Control, which does exactly this. From time to time, mostly on reboot, it may cause some of those files to start downloading again to your local hard drive, but you can then highlight the directory and choose to remove them locally again. I've been using this extension for about a year and it works quite well; it even works on the latest version of MacOS (Mojave 10.14.1).

For reference, I have the same need as you, and presently have 700GB (of 2TB) in iCloud, with a 512GB hard drive (with 300GB free).

 

[Tech198]

https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/system-information/optimize-storage-space-sysp4ee93ca4/mac

"and optimise storage by keeping only recently opened files on your Mac when space is needed."

I thought Optimize Storage is only IF space is limited.